"I also heard a person that sounded like one of my FI mates in Austin Burgstrem international about a week ago."
hey, you know that person there in Austin Burgstrem international that you heard? well, guess what, pal?
----it wasn't me.
i agree though on the flying... as most here that have flown most likely will, in real life its somewhat easier than in IL2. in some respects, of course. only thing is, flying a Cessna in comparison to say a high performance bf-109, or say a P-40, is peas from a "different" pod. the Cessna was designed and engineered to be easy and safe to fly... the old warplanes were designed to be death-dealing machines. but of course you know that, but there may be some that don't.
now i never finished my flying lessons (ran out of time and money years ago when i was taking them) and of course have never flown a WW2 warplane, but i've spoken to many that have over the years (and still do every chance i get.) and most of the old timers that i know or have known say that actually flying the powerful fighters wasn't that hard in most cases... under normal circumstances. its just that there were so MANY things to remember... and sometimes those important things were forgotten in the midst of heated, life or death combat. and those things could kill you as fast and easy as an enemy's bullet. because in combat, having to yank those babies around to kill or keep from being killed, they flew completely different than when just tooling around over the airfield on a sight seeing trip.
the speeds were greater of course, much greater, and the stick and other control actions required were many, many times faster. a slight/short memory lapse could cause any number of very bad things to happen to the plane and hence to the pilot. one pilot that i spoke with likened it to always "flying" a step ahead of yourself... and the enemy... and even the plane. or trying to, anyway. to keep from killing yourself.
and unlike the modern civi planes, most of the old fighers had vicious bad habits... doing THIS or THAT say, would cause a flat spin, doing THIS or THAT would cause something else bad to happen. or sometimes NOT doing THIS or THAT (at the right time) would cause the badness. sometimes, THIS or THAT bad thing happend for no reason at all, no matter what you did or didn't do. and you had to be ready for it all... and react instantly or you died. and sometimes, no matter what you did, you still died.
setting here thinking about all of that, is a scary thing to me. those old guys were tough as nails... men of steel actually... to even climb in one of those old planes and fly into deadly combat in them. they had balls!
Beowolff
. Next year I will be soloing in a cessna 172 hopefully. It gets real bumpy up around 2000-3000 in austin this time of year its hard to keep the plane on track. I've been practicing stalls and landings. And trust me real life is a whole lot easyer than a simulator. On my first lesson my instructor even let me land the plane which was a breeze with a gear on the nose and not on the tail. Its also easyer casue no ones shooting at you and theres no holes in your wings or oil on the windsheild. One problem remained. I wished death to my dentist who accidently filled a cavity wrong and now I have to go get it fixed so my tooth doesnt burst while im flying. I also got to pull some Gs with a 90 degree turn which makes the people in the flight simulators seem like wimps when they black out cause I felt fine in a 90 degree turn at about 140. 
M8 S!
