I agree the Vimy is practically unflyable, especially at maximum fuel on board. I had to apply the trim myself (
after market modification, still trying to have the virtual FAA accept it... 
...it was either that or fly constantly stick-in-the-gut to obtain level flight) to have it behave SOMEWHAT better... but SOMEWHAT doesn't mean a lot, here. It still doesn't climb worth a damn at full fuel... you're constantly on dead man's corner skimming the stall most of the times even only flying straight and level... a lost cause... I cannot really believe the real deal behaved like that. M$
MUST have messed it up. :-/
About your plan to replicate in virtual the flight of the Spirit of St Louis, as evocative as that is, personally I would not attempt to do the last leg in a one single swoop. The NY to Paris the way Lindbergh did is WAY over the top for me, if even him, a hardened real pilot of the first world war, fell asleep at the yoke and for little didn't fall altogether... I do know my limits.
Of course we all, and especially you who want to replicate that flight, DO have the facilitation that we fly simulated planes and that the flight can be saved in any moment, even in mid-flight (
only remember to put the sim in pause before saving the flight or you might receive a not nice surprise restarting it), to give you time and way to get a few Z's without a disaster happening.
That and you do have the facilitation (
though personally I refer to it as a handicap, since it compromises realism BADLY) that the default planes are almost all ice-resistant to the point almost invulnerability, so, even without an anti-ice system on board and always referring to the movie, you won't have to prepare to ditch only to be saved to do it from the skin of your teeth by the thawing of the ice at lower altitudes.
But it's always 36-some hours of continuous flight, and I would not swear on the FS9 default Spirit of St Louis having REALLY the correct range to make you overfly the pond in one jump. Not to add that it's really quite twitchy and not the most comfortable plane (
Lindbergh must have had ball bearing grade steel balls it the real deal really behaved like the default FS9 plane). :-/
Of course there's a freeware add-on Spirit of St Louis around for FS9, which boast better performances than the default (
really? Wow! That's a first... 
) on the Flight1 freeware page... if you still use the unsinkable FS9, you can (
and you better) use this last. You can find it here:
http://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=library PS
Another suggestion I can give you is to not use the real-life weather, especially if you end up saving the flight... in flight to get some snooze time (
if you do such, at the restart of the saved flight you WILL have some discrepancies, since the weather you'll find WILL be different from the one you left), but you better plot your own off-line weather, that should be as similar as the one met by Lindbergh as possible for the flight to be worth be remembered as a virtual replica.
There is no such a thing as overkill. Only unworthy targets.
