Tim writes:

It is no more expensive that other hobbies or activities.

The number of other hobbies and activities that are orders of magnitude less
expensive than flying is too great to allow them all to be enumerated here.

It takes about 70 hours of flight training to get a private pilot certificate.

It takes a pencil and a piece of charcoal to practice art as a hobby.

I see no correlation between simulation and real flying.

I see no correlation between flying tin cans and flying any other type of
aircraft. But perhaps we're both wrong.

Perhaps the reluctance of real pilots to welcome
you has little to do with your chosen way to spend time (simming/gaming)
than it is your clear and often rudely stated discussions about how GA
is useless and the pilots of GA aircraft are stupid, ignorant, filthy
rich, macho/testosterone filled babies with huge egos.

Their reluctance is directly connected to their emotions. Unfortunately, some
of those emotions are indeed correlated with stupidity, ignorance, and
testosterone, although the correlation is not terribly high.

Most pilots I have met do not match the view you have of them.

Most of those pilots don't start threads five times a week discussing me here
in this newsgroup.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.