Sometimes I marvel at Active Sky...I flew a GA flight just now, and ASX really made it challenging. A nice 550 nm flight in a Piper Twin Comanche at 7,000 over African desert was what I had planned. The weather briefing seemed OK, although I noticed an area of storm activity east of a point roughly halfway along my route, blowing west.Well, as I neared that portion of my route, I could see dense clouds building at my altitude, and that's when the turbulence began. It quickly worsened, and rain and lightning commenced. This was about the midpoint of my route, and there were no convenient alternate airfieds nearby, so I requested higher altitude to get above the cloud layer. As I climbed, I could see I was going to go through some nasty looking clouds, so I requested course deviations so I could get around the worst of it. Dodging between and around clouds was interesting and beautiful.I wound up at 15,000 (FL 150, actually). Even then I wasn't above it all, but I was between layers with very little turbulence. The ceiling of the TwinCo is 18,000, and I could see that I still wouldn't be above it all, so I stayed at 15,000. But with the temperature at 30-31 degrees, I was in icing conditions, so on came the pitot heat. After a few minutes, the plane began to lose power. I needed to switch to alternate air intake to overcome that.So I'm thinking, OK what else can happen? Well, the winds increased: 35-40 kts hitting me broadside. I had to adjust my heading as much as 20 degrees to hold course. And I'm thinking, OK, if that's all that happens, I still might be able to pull off this flight!Then the wind direction began to change. It ended up changing 180 degrees, but swung around toward the tail of the plane, lowering my airspeed almost to redline. With thinner air (with clouds) above, and turbulent thunderstorms below, I was running out of options.Back and forth the wind swung, until one time, when it was behind me, my airspeed dropped below redline. That was it, I had to descend into the thunderstorm. I requested 12,000 and began descending... and that's when I broke out of the storm cell! Flew the remainder of the flight underneath a thick cloud layer (which looked a bit surreal) to a fairly routine landing.=====================================================================It doesn't often occur that a sim flight doesn't feel like simming to me. This was one such flight, with definite suspension of disbelief for me. I honestly don't know how long the difficult portion lasted, as I was 100% focused on flying the plane, but I'm thinking 45 minutes is fairly accurate. On the plus side, I witnessed a spectacular sunset during descent!Thank you, Active Sky, for a rich and memorable flight!

Thanks Alex!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/