After reading mstram's account, I feel quite stupid! I did grow up in the vicinity of GA. Where I lived, there were all the planes flying in and out of Cranfield, together with the weird and wonderful on test at Thurleigh. Even after two Air Experience flights in the Chipmunk, it still didn't occur to me that it was something I could do! Well, you know what they say about assumption, and I assumed that to fly you had to be rich, an airline pilot, or in the military. It was flightsim that made me see the light - the message in the excellent manual (lessons with Rod Machado, tie-in with King Schools) that came with FS2000 was basically, "If you enjoy flight sim, why not get down to your local airport and have some real lessons?" Good work, Microsoft!