I too have found the aircraft easier to handle than the sim during a Daily Mail 'death, shock, near disaster' scenario. The aircraft was a pleasure to fly and strangely enough, I enjoyed the real life handling experience. However... I am one of the 'train hard, fight easy' brigade. If a student can't do it in a more complex (
) simulator, I would rather they didn't get to try it on the real thing.
Was the training representative? Well yes it really was, the SOPS came naturally and without any massive yaw or control inputs required, as suggested by the sim, we both had plenty of excess capacity to get all sorts of things sorted that we never have time for in the sim.
TIME A TRE'S NO1 ENEMY.