Just to quickly answer some of your question Ray. We can talk more in detail on Vent some time.
The real plane is definitely easier to fly, for one the plane next to you is BIG, it's your whole world in diamond and still fills 90% of your vision in spread. Physically there are two items that stood out most for me, one was the pitch axis is just as sensitive in the real jet as in the sim and PIO happens, however with all the additional visual feedback, seat of your pants feeling and stick sensitivity/precision it is easier to catch the PIO in one to one and a half cycles and put a stop to it. Once I had a better feel for the pitch axis there was no PIO for the rest of the flight.
The other is the wind stream effect. I'm sure there is a technical term for it (beta?) but I'm talking about the tendency of the air flowing over the jet to dampen out your inputs, especially the yaw axis. The yaw axis in the sim is just wrong, or the effect is not modeled, but in the real jet in level flight with no alpha on the wings rolling doesn't do much to precisely move you left and right. However the real rudder is practically idiot proof- unlike the sim where a little rudder away from the boss will put you on a new heading and take you away at a constant rate even after the input is removed, in the real jet you put in rudder to correct your lateral and when you take it out that's it- the jet stays right where you want it. I did more work with my feet than my right hand (which coincidentally was the biggest thing for me to get used to when I was getting my private coming out of sims as a kid).
We all got in different amounts of stick time depending on who was up front, Boards gave me the jet once we were established in the climb and I flew it until Wilbur called for front seaters to take the controls when Wilbur gave the jet to Blaze (about 20 minutes). I got in a little more time after that. Spread formation was not too bad, then we kicked it out to route once we leveled off and the outer wingmen caught up. After being in spread distance route was easy. None of us got to fly the formation roll unfortunately, though I'm confident most of us could have handled it (in spread not diamond as the roll was flown). SE and Striker got some solo time after they were cleared out of the diamond and only SE got to do a loop. We were heavy on gas with the previous weekend's events and saving the free fuel for the next performance was the smart financial move. Pitch for landing was flown at about 550K so we got some good G's on the aircraft (again depending on who was up front, you can see in the video some pitches were harder than others), I didn't look at the G meter but I'd guess Boards did between 3-3.5G, nothing crazy, no strain maneuver required
I didn't use the speed brake all that often. Specifically I used it twice, by accident, when I first took control. As I brought the throttle back the switch caught on the ball cap that I had stowed in my left lower leg pocket and did two quick pops, putting me aft by about a quarter plane length. The spool lag on the engine was more noticeable than the sim but still very responsive and smooth. Once we were in the roll Boards, as his namesake, used the speed brake with vigor- powering past what he needed and using the brake to as sort of an instant catch up (when it was closed) as we came through the back half of the roll on left wing. I'd say it was more technique than necessity.
That's the highlights, we had a blast and look forward to doing our part to contribute to the team in 2012.