Glad to herar you have fibre now Ajax! And congrats on the retirement.
Yeah you'll need Win10 now, SG had to get it also.
Syria is a great map, and especially for helos, it's just better everywhere over the old maps and works especially well with the new clouds. It is a little harder on machines though -I'm due an upgrade, although parts are scarce ATM with the current situation world-wide.
As for fast-movers etc. Yeah, ATM we have a bias towards those (Mako 'found' some new friends who fly when they can, mainly in western modern stuff) but I miss helos, and SG pops round when he can (he's in a similar situation that you were). A few here have the Hind oredered, so we can expect some rotary-wing action when it shows up. Of the newer AC, I don't have them all, but my fav is the AV-8b, although it has its limits (A2A esp) but I find it fun to fly. There are options with it for FOB operations although recently I haven't made any missions to accomodate that. I still prefer older gen AC myself, but flying is flying so it's all-good!