Well I thought I would reaquaint myself with the Tomcat, get flung off the bow of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier fly a mission and try to trap back aboard.
Hitting a wire for me is very hit and miss because I tend to use airforce planes and rarely fly navy.
Sometimes I trap, oftentimes I bolter and need a few tries to get aboard.

I regarded myself as semi current in the F14B. How wrong I was. I can get the engines and avionics up in general, but the finer details including getting the wing sweep set up right completely eluded me. Ended up having to control wing sweep manually. Not a great state of affairs.

Luckily the Tomcat comes with a lump of lard sat in the back seat called Jester who is only too happy to run the checklist to keep a forgetful pilot honest.

Jester assisted startup.

Tried a few phone app flight sim, once aviation gets in your blood you never loose it, looked at a few ultralight types, never went through with it 

DCS 2024 and Beyond.  Best settings 1440p and fullscreen.

Some may remember this clip doing the rounds on the news maybe 18 months ago.  A Russian SU25 pilot in the Ukraine  captured his shootdown and ejection on headcam.

Spoil alert.  It was not real.  It was someone replaying a track from a flight on DCS in the Caucasus and adding some extra audio to it.  All the news outlets fell for it hook, line and sinker.

That SU25 he ejected from is in fact a free aircraft and Caucasus is a free terrain.  Free as in completely free, gratis, without charge and no credit card details required.  Just download and play.

You now know what it is like to eject in DCS.  Not pleasant and in VR is even worse.

Of course the paid for stuff is far better quality than the freebies.

I have a Realflight Evolution flight simulator I use all the time for my radio control airplanes.

On a wing and a prayer.

Starboard side undercarriage shot away.
Port engine destroyed.
Hydraulic circuit one low pressure..
Targeting pod inop.
Nav system inop.
Glass cockpit screens dark.
Starboard aileron trim tab damaged.
Flaps damaged.
Vertical stabs and rudders damaged.
Large hole in starboard wing.
Starboard wing tank fuel boost pump inop.
Starboard main tank fuel boost pump inop.
Caution panel lit up like a christmas tree.

And she still got me 175 miles back to base.....

Not like the devil bike. ?

The amount of detail is quite mind boggling on the newer stuff. The newest flight simulator I played is Microsoft flight simulator x. I remember trying to play it on my cheesy old computer, barely worked at a steady fps.

Sound like your simulator is very true to life. Heard the same kind of stories from actual A-10 warthog sorties. Make you wonder why our military is so set on trying to get rid of them. ( we have a squadron of A-10s nearby at Selfridge air base)

The US DoD asked Eagle Dynamics to make a procedural sim for training neophyte hog pilots in switchology and how to expect the aircraft to handle. That was back in the late 90s, early 2000s.

When that aircraft version became obsolete, ED released it to the public in 2011, obviously without any mission sensitive /still classified avionics.

About 6 years later VR became a thing and took it to a whole new level of reality.

The next version became obsolete and the Hog sim was given a very inexpensive upgrade to encompass the new to us avionics. This was in 2020 and the upgrade was around $10.00 if you already owned the Hog. The RRP price for the entire Hog is around $80.
We fly stuff that has been obsolete for at least 10 years, I suppose the military customers insist on it.

Currently there is a US Airforce A10 training centre at Davis Monthan Airbase where Hog pilots now do much of their training on DCS in VR using a similar setup to mine with replica stick and throttles. Right down to the buttons and switches, even the button press weights are identical to the real aircraft.

Version we currently have includes the Helmet Mounted Cuing System (HMCS) in VR it is projected into one eye.

Have a vid about it.  Tricker who made the vid is far more competent than I am using it.  I am a but more clunky and long winded about it, but I get there in the end,