NZFF

XP continues to impress me. I flew from Fairbanks AK up to Barrow on the Arctic Ocean at night, again in the default C90.

Great work Nick , amazing lighting. XP will be my next purchase , Ive got a trial version I might fire up soon.

Barrow at night, impressive. The last and only time I was at Barrow the runway was still pierced steel planking.

I'm still trying to decide between XP and MSFS

Depends on what's important to you. MSFS looks great out of the box but is of course limited right now. XP can be made to look pretty good pretty quickly and there are a huge number of good addons. Also, if you're into airliners, helicopters or gliders, then XP is the one to have. The flight model on XP is hard to beat.

The little PT19 near Juneau on it's first flight. Lovely bird that requires some finesse close to the ground....

More of the little PT-19 on a low level jaunt around Juneau. Great fun but it does make you work.

Designed to separate the wheat from the chaff in Primary training, I can imagine it wasn't a 'walk in the park'. Does it have that REP packaged with it?

Not REP as such. It has what they've called the 'true vintage' system. You can take the cowlings off and clean the air filters etc. It doesn't quite have the scope of REP but for simple aircraft like this, it works pretty well. In addition, the aircraft will age in terms of getting dirty. Flying in summer will incur bug strikes that you can clean.

Here are some more of the machine just showing the detail. I managed to stand it on its nose yesterday during an engine runup... in for a bulk strip now.

A lot of nice detail which is good 'cause it's a bit pricey for such a simple model. Does it have a tail wheel lock?

It is a little pricey I guess however I got it on the first day when it was on special so... As for the tailwheel lock. By default, it is as the real aircraft is. Outside of 31 degrees, it's castoring. Inside of that, with the stick back, it locks to the rudder. In the options you can select it on or off all of the time too.