It's amazing how a continuous search at possibilities eventually leads to finding a "needle in a haystack". Introducing the Teensy 3.6 development. It a 32-bit Cortex M4 ARM core with (FPU) at a 1/6th of the price of the Pixhawk (The Pixhawk runs the same chip although has double the Flash memory). Granted, it doesn't have any sensors but man, that's find. Did I also mention that it works straight with arduino code. This means that I've upgraded to the most powerful MCU in the market at the same price as an Arduino Due . Wow! I overcame my shock by going to Robotics in Centurion and getting my hands on this dynamite. It can even run X-plane flight simulation controls in real-time communicating through the USB port! Ok enough ranting and raving! The point is now I can test the embedded algorithms on a similar ARM-based microcontroller as the Pixhawk and conclude the testing and validation up to HILS level with the sensors in the loop (while emulating th