After sitting on the fence for so long with FSE, I finally decided to read the quick start guide and just jump in. I really wanted to fly the Baron 58 (my go-to plane these days) so I first had to pick one up at Chino (where there were no suitable assignments but there was the plane I wanted) and hop over to Ontario (where there were no planes I wanted but there was a short assignment) for my pick up. After struggling for a bit with .Net errors, and then figuring out that I simply needed to change the "Title" entry in my Aircraft.cfg file for the Carenado Baron 58 to match the default FSX Baron 58, I was able to grab the plane and head over to Ontario. The "package" was a couple of drunken Hollywood celebs [in my imagination] and I had to fly them into LAX.
I did both trips offline from the PE network, as I was short on time last night and also because I was so worried about doing something goofy or wrong, and the pressure of real/live ATC would have been too much for me on top of the FSE "work" (which I now know realize is as simple of clicking "Start Flight" and then just managing your fuel sensibly).
I've heard so many good things about the RealAir Duke (v1 and, now, the v2), that this might be my next plane (although I'm still loving my Carenado BE58, but getting above 12,000ft can be a real challenge sometimes). The only problem I foresee with FSE is that there weren't many Duke's hanging around in SoCal airports to rent. So now I need to save up the $40.00 to buy the RealAir Duke 2.0 (oh and the v$500,000+ that I'll need to buy my own Duke on FSE, so I don't have to rely on finding one to rent.
).In summary, PE + FSE is going to be great. This truly is the perfect combination of objective-based fun and realism for me. I just wish I had made the effort to delve into FSE earlier.