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For anyone that doesn't want to pay the £25 for FSX Deluxe, you can get Flight Gear for free which is pretty good and comes with a fairly large selection of aircraft.
Link here -> http://www.flightgear.org/
There are people coming from Scotland for the open day... although I can see your point as engineering works are such effort. I am lucky to have got mine they sold out a few weeks ago!.