If you are reading this, I can imagine that you have flown everywhere and done everything you can do in the Microsoft default aircraft set. By now you will be intimately familiar with the Cessna, have flown the Mooney upside down under Golden Gate Bridge, and tried to land the 737 on a 400 foot dirt strip in North Dakota. The program has given up its secrets and you are looking for something else to try your hand at - and you have noticed that FlightSim.Com claims to have thousands of files there for download, but you just aren't quite sure how to go about it. Now is time to learn.

First of all, before we even go looking for trouble, we need one essential utility, a shareware program called WinZip. Why WinZip? Well, many of the aircraft on this and other sites are in what are known as compressed files. You can imagine a compressed file as being like the suitcase you would like to take on holiday, with everything crushed into it, except with a compressed file you can get the kitchen sink in too. Aircraft creators use file compression to squeeze all the files that go together to make their planes into the smallest possible space - not only is it convenient to have everything collected together, it makes for faster downloads too. The universal format used around the net is what is called a 'zip' file, and the program you need to unpack a zip is called WinZip (there are others, including the original zip file utility PKzip, but this one is my favorite). The first thing you need to do to start this project is to create two directories on your hard disk: one called 'Downloads' and the other called 'Junk'. If you aren't sure how to do this, then I suggest going off and buying a book called Windows for Dummies and reading it thoroughly before coming back to try this, as your learning curve is going to be too steep otherwise. You will use these two directories to store the files you have downloaded and to unzip files before you install them in your Flight Simulator (henceforth known as FS) folder.

To get WinZip, fire up your web browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) and click on this link. This should take you direct to the WinZip site and from there you can follow the link to downloading the evaluation version. When your browser pops up a dialog to ask you which folder to download the file to, make sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked and choose the download folder you just created to save it in. When you have finished getting WinZip, open up Windows Explorer, and take a look in the download folder. There should only be one file in there and it should be the install file for WinZip, so launch it by double-clicking on it and follow the instructions. Assuming you have a working FS setup you now have all the tools you need to build your own dream plane from the tens of thousands FlightSim.Com has to offer.

OK, so now we have to decide which aircraft to get. You may have your own ideas, but I think we ought to build a 747. For some reason Microsoft did not think of putting one in the default FS setup, and while this is a shame, there are hundreds to choose from on FlightSim.Com. The first thing you need to do is to log in to FlightSim.Com, if you haven't already done so. Many people never get beyond the news page, so if you have never seen the guts of FlightSim.Com, you need to follow the 'member login' hyperlink up at the top of the home page, just under the ad banner, and register as a user on the way. I have circled the link you need in red. Just click on the image on the left to see a larger version.

Incidentally, don't worry about giving away your family secrets on the Internet, FlightSim.Com only uses the login to keep track of the number of users online. You won't get deluged with junk emails. I've been a member for many years and haven't received a single one.

Once you are logged in, you will need to follow the links to the 'main menu' - there is a big bold hypertext link down the bottom of the home page.

The main menu page is the guts of FlightSim.Com and it is pretty daunting to look at, but it is well worth getting to know it, because it gives you access to all sorts of goodies and knowledge about FS. If you have got the time and the inclination, have a play around, clicking on the links to see what you get. Particularly useful ones include Product Reviews (which takes you to a long list of FS product reviews stretching back into the dim mists of time) and the Forums, where you can post messages and discuss FS to your heart's content.

About two-thirds the way down the right hand side is a bar saying 'File Libraries (Downloads)' and just below that is a link called 'Search File Libraries'. I have circled it in red and I want you to left click it.

You should now have the Advanced File Search page up. This is right in under the hood of FlightSim.Com and if you understand how to use this page, the world of flight simulation is at your fingertips. The bit we want is sandwiched in between the two runway graphics. There are three selection boxes, two text boxes and a 'Start Search' button. Feel free to play around with this for a while, but once you are ready I would like you to left click on the button to the right of the top selection box, then grab the slider by left clicking, holding and dragging it until you see a line saying: 'FS2000 aircraft'. Select it by left clicking on it and the line should highlight.

Okay, now type '747' (without the quotes) in the box called 'search for text' and click 'Start search'.

After a pause, your screen should fill with a list of 747 files. There are ten on the first page and if you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a link called 'next ten files.' Left clicking this will bring up files 11 through 20 and so on. When I did the search, there were 65 files found, which should be enough for anyone, but by the time you do this search, there are likely to be many more, so don't be upset if none of the files in this illustration appear on the page you see.

To keep this as simple as possible, I want to use a particular aircraft file and that means going back to the Advanced File Search page. You can get there either by using the 'back' button on your browser or by clicking the 'exit list files' links on the page. Back again at the Advanced File Search page, leave everything as it is and type 'b7473sab.zip' (no quotes again) but this time in the 'file name' box. Then hit 'start search'.

You are a real pro now - got the plane first time, huh? You should have one file in your list, titled 'FS2000 Sabena Boeing 747-329SCD' and right above it are two links, one saying 'download,' the other saying 'view.'

Left click download and up comes the copyright page, boring I know, but a necessary evil, given the number of pirates out there. Take a deep breath and left click 'I accept, start download' button.

Up should pop the file download dialog again, and making sure that the 'save this file to disk' button is checked, click OK. Use the 'Save as' dialog to select your download folder and then click the OK button. Time will pass, depending on the speed of your modem and the quality of your Internet connection. When the download is finished, close the download dialog box, close your browser and shut down your Internet connection.

Now fire up Windows Explorer and open up your Download folder. If you have done everything right, there, sitting all on its lonesome should be b7473sab.zip, although depending on how Windows is set up on your machine, you may not be able to see the .zip bit. If you have WinZip installed on your machine, the file icon should be a yellow filing cabinet in a vice.

Open the file in WinZip by double clicking on on the b7473sab.zip icon (my apologies to people who have Windows set up so that single clicks substitute for double clicks). In the colorful WinZip window that opens up, you should see a worryingly long list of files.

Click on the 'extract' button and you will get a new dialog which is there to help you select which folder you want to extract the zipped files into. If you use the 'folders/drives' pane to find the 'Junk' folder on your hard disk, and left click on the folder name to select it, the 'Extract to' pane should change to show something like 'C:\Junk.' Make sure you have the 'all files' button checked and especially the 'Use folder names' button checked too. To unpack the files all you have to do is to left click the extract button at the top right of the 'Extract' dialog and there should be a flurry of disk activity as your aircraft files are unzipped into the junk folder.

Now if you look in the Junk folder, you should see that it contains ten files. Five of them are folders, and each of these contains more files. One of the remaining files is called Readme - if you double click on it, you can read why Vital Vanbeginne created this particular aircraft. We are that close to having a flyable plane here.

Although Vital, the creator of the aircraft, has packaged the files which make up the plane pretty well, you can't install them into FS2000 just as they are, because they all need to be in one named aircraft folder. So make sure you still have the Junk directory selected in Windows Explorer, so that all the files and folders within it are visible, and then left click on the word 'File' on Windows Explorer's menu bar (that's at the very top left, just under where it says 'Exploring Junk').

When the file menu drops down, left click on the 'new' prompt, which should appear some way down the menu. Yet another sub-menu will spring out. Left click the word 'Folder' on this one, and the menu should disappear and a new folder should appear with the name highlighted under the icon. Type in 'B7473SAB' here, without the quotes.

Now for a tricky bit. I want you to select every other file and folder in the Junk folder and drag it into the B7473SAB folder, until it is the only folder visible in the Junk folder.

Okay! Now we have to find where your copy of FS2000 is lurking on your hard disk. Most probably it is in Program files, so left click on the little + sign next to the Program files folder in the left hand pane of Windows Explorer. A huge list of sub-folders should appear - drag the scroll bar on the divider down until you can see a folder called Microsoft games. Click the + sign next to that. Again, you should get a list of sub-folders appearing, the length of which will depend on how many Microsoft games you own, but one of those folders will be called FS2000. At risk of getting repetitive strain injury here, left click the little plus sign next to that! Even more sub-folders will appear - I bet you had no idea how many files there were on you hard disk Now one of these sub-folders should be called 'Aircraft,' find it but don't click on it, because that is where we are going to put our hard won 747 [graphic]. Now go back and select the Junk folder - you may need to use the scroll bar to find it depending on how much software is installed on your machine. Left click on the Junk folder in the left hand pane of Explorer and then select the B7473SAB folder by moving your mouse to the right hand pane. Left click on B747SAB3 and the drag all the way down until it is level with the 'Aircraft' folder and then move it across until 'Aircraft' folder is highlighted and let the mouse button go.

The B7473SAB folder should disappear from Junk and move to Aircraft - check it has really gone there by left clicking the + sign next to Aircraft and somewhere in there you should see it. If the B7473SAB folder doesn't appear in Aircraft there are two possibilities. The first is that Windows hasn't updated Explorer to show the move - you can check this by left clicking View on the Explorer menu bar, then selecting Refresh from the drop down menu. If B7473SAB doesn't appear in Aircraft after this, either it is still in Junk, or you have missed Aircraft and dropped it in another nearby folder. By now, you should know enough to go looking for it and move it to its rightful place. Close Windows Explorer and any other windows that happen to be open.

Take a deep breath and start up Flight Simulator. Once the default plane is on the runway, go to the menu bar and click 'aircraft' and then 'select aircraft'. If you scroll down the list you should see 'B747 329SCD Sabena' there. Left click on that line and admire your brand new 747 spinning around in the show room. Want to take it for a spin? Ok, select the green check mark, wait for it to load and you have a new plane - just don't expect it to get into the air at Meig's, that's all. If don't want to end up in the sea, I'd go to Denver or JFK of somewhere with the kind of real estate that a really big jet demands. And good luck; because this baby isn't quite as manoeuvrable as the Cessna. The aircraft you have just installed uses a default Microsoft panel and sound set. If you want to make your plane more realistic, then please read the next article in this series, which will teach you the art of installing a different panel.

Andrew Herd
andrew.herd@btinternet.com