What WmLute said, in spades!
If you are capable of learning the material, willing to invest a modest sum for a decent computer, and control system.
And a reasonable amount of time every day, week, month etc. There is no reason that most people can't get to the point where even against a good stick they have roughly a 50/50 chance.
Starting out its hard, no doubt about it. Its tough chewing no matter how you cut it.
6 months to a year to learn the basics, then another 6 - 18 months to learn the planes and the finnesse stuff.
The first 2 years that Widewing was around, long before he was a trainer. You could find him in the TA almost every night. Mostly flying off by himself, mastering one plane after the next. Learning the flight model, learning the little tips and tricks for each one. And then somehow storing all that data in that supercomputer he calls a brain.
So its very possible, but chances are your not going to get there by heading to the main.
You need TA time, and ideally time with a good trainer. AH has several, most are pretty busy most of the time.
Start with your new guy by grabbing a very simple plane like the D3a1, and start teaching him basic merges. Using the vertical to keep your energy up, and basic escape manuvers.
Read all you can read, start at the trainers site.
http://trainers.hitechcreations.comAs for me, I don't consider myself a hot stick, and it took me 6 - 8 months of flying almost every day to get to where I could finally kill my teacher. At that point I exploded, it all started connecting. I reached my peak in AH probably 6 or 7 years ago, since then declining health, and age have left me just trying to hang on to what I have left. And pass on what I can to the next guy.
So don't let the sheer volume of time scare you.
