Thanks for the replies! Yes, My mic is configured OK and I've been doing the speech recognition training in Windows and in the program itself. I think I made a mistake when I was doing some of the speech work though! Somewhere along the line I must have not said "flaps" clearly enough because whenever I have the program running and I say "flaps 1" or flaps whatever number, the co-pilot says "OK, slats 1"!! I don't even know what slats do, but then I have to say "flaps" again about 3 times before he gets it. I'm going to do more of the speech training today and try to correct that part.I've adjusted the sound on my speakers too. I've got a 5.1 surround sound setup and the front left speakers were drowning out the co-pilots voice coming from the centre speaker, so I've turned the side 2 way down and left the centre speaker at 100%.So I woke up this morning and found my reply from the support guys about my questions and they are all fixed!1) The constant "new atc options" thing was my fault because somewhere along the line when I was playing around with the settings I enabled "use screen narrator" which is for blind pilots and makes the program tell you everything that appears in the atc window. That's now disabled.2) When the program installs it changes settings in FSX, so I just had to go back to the "general" settings in FSX and click the box that says "show message log in atc window" Now I can see what ATC says without having to remember the details or having to write anything down. Not very realistic I know, but I'm a newb, so in the future I'll turn that off when I get better at it and when responding to ATC becomes more second-nature.3) ATC commands. I didn't realise this but when the program installs it gives you the usual PDF docs to read from the start menu, but within the actual MCE folder itself is a DOCS folder that has a whole load of MS Word docs that list all the commands available and all grouped into neat sections. There are Word docs for all the co-pilot commands too. Mt printer is going to be very busy today!I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy this, but the one thing that nags me is that I'm going to end up relying on it too much (like I do with the AP!) and end up not doing anything myself.Al, I think it was your video I saw on YouTube that went with the AVSIM review and in the video you are controlling the flight totally by voice and you say that you're sitting there with your arms folded the whole time. I guess that was an extreme example to show just how accurate and responsive the program is, but I kinda worry that I'll end up doing that and get bored with it! I'll have to limit myself to just how much I get the co-pilot to do. Actually, I started this thread out by asking about voice recognition for ATC, so I think I'll concentrate on that part of it first so that I still learn how to fly by myself.Mark

I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy this, but the one thing that nags me is that I'm going to end up relying on it too much (like I do with the AP!) and end up not doing anything myself.

When You will spend some more time in FSX and flight IFR, You will be so glad, that someone are willing to take over the radios and set AP for You when flying complex approach plate. One person is not enough without hitting 'P' in such situations.