First, most of the new aircraft you might download require BAO/Apollo Flight Simulator Flight Shop (a.k.a. FSFS), an addon program to Microsoft Fltsim 5 (a.k.a. FS5). If you don't have FSFS (or the FSFW95 converter if you're using that sim instead of FS5), these new aircraft won't work (because it was used to design and build them). The only decent one that doesn't need FSFS used to be the DC9 Collection, by Simula. Now, there are rather more non-FSFS aircraft around. You must read aircraft descriptions and be aware of the difference.

Now, suppose you have FSFS loaded along with your FS (or it's a non-FSFS aircraft, or you know all about FSW95 conversion). When you download an aircraft it typically arrives in your computer into the directory in .zip format, a compressed form to reduce the download time.

A file in zipped form needs to be unzipped using one of several shareware utilities before the computer has access to it. Several of these utilities can be downloaded from FlightSim.Com, including:

PKzip v2.04g
WinZip

Once you have pkz204g.exe, you run it on your hard drive and note that pkunzip.exe is one of the files that comes out of all this. This is the one needed to unzip, or decompress the aircraft file. Suppose the aircraft just happens to be my Bleriot Type XI (heh heh, just a coincidence...) whose download file is called bleriot3.zip.

At the c:> prompt, you type pkunzip bleriot3 and the computer unzips the file to yield several decompressed files, including bleriot.doc, bleriot.air and several labeled bleriot.0af, bleriot.1af, bleriot.2af, etc.

The .doc file is documentation. Other folks may call theirs .txt or read.me or some such. Print it out and read it. It should describe what files you have and where each should go. It might even sneak in some history or something.

Specifically, the file bleriot.air goes into your fltsim5\pilots subdirectory. The files of the form bleriot.?af all go into fltsim5\texture. And you're done. The next time you start fltsim5, you'll find the Bleriot listed among the aircraft; click on it and you're off. And, because you put it into fltsim5\pilots (as opposed to fltsim5\sim, from which it can also be flown) you can even modify its flight dynamics using the Design feature listed under Aircraft.

It's all quite straightforward, once you have FSFS, know how to unzip files and move them from place to place. Hope this info helps (and that I didn't leave anything out...).

Dennis Simanaitis
EngEd@aol.com