Author Ian Radcliffe has been flightsimming for a long time -- since 1984 and FS2 on a Commodore 64. In an effort to give something back after all these years of enjoyment, Ian has offered a series of articles that will offer hints, insights and suggestions to enrich the flight simulator experience. This installment looks at the challenge of dealing with crosswinds and flying in formation, and ends with a trip suggestion up the Hudson River.

The Avro Vulcan is a highly regarded cold war era British heavy bomber, with a unique look and sound. Reviewer Alex Dickinson has long been a fan and has tried every flightsim version available, so was pleased to see Just Flight release this updated version for Prepar3D. He found it to be a very accurate recreation of the plane, with lots of details, and a challenge to fly--just like the real one.

Author Ron Blehm knows a young woman pilot in Washington State who shares her flight training and flying adventures online and through videos. His idea was that it would be fun for flight simmers to join in on her adventures, flying the same routes and sharing their experiences. A number of people have submitted video responses from flight 2 and we now offer a new flight to try. Our lady pilot has just got her instrument rating, so additional adventures will be in store in future flights.

There are plenty of older FSX/P3D titles that are still worth your attention. In this review, Felicity Smith takes a look at Conington Airfield from Just Flight. Just Flight obviously has a connection with this airport too, as a number of aircraft they have modeled are based here. If you enjoy a quiet country airfield with lots of detail, this may be just the place for you too.

Robin Tannahill has been busy doing aircraft repaints for X-Plane and in this series of articles he shares his techniques. The first tutorial covered the basic techniques of repainting using GIMP. In this second tutorial the special requirements for doing repaints for Traffic Global are covered.

While we're stuck at home due to the coronavirus, A2A Simulations has been generous enough to offer one of their great Accu-sim aircraft, the P-40 Warhawk, for free. Author Ian Radcliffe, while a big A2A fan, had never tried this plane before but grabbed it now and felt obligated to give A2A a "thank you".

TerraFlora, which is available from Turbulent Design for X-Plane, FSX and Prepar3D, is one of those products that improves the look of the entire world. In this case, it's trees that get improved, making scenery more accurate in color and variety. Reviewer Michael Hayward tries the X-Plane version and was quite impressed with the results.

Geneva Professional from Aerosoft lets Prepar3D v4 pilots fly into Switzerland's second busiest airport, located close to the towering Alps. Reviewer Alex Dickinson found it to be highly accurate and well modeled, with smooth frame rates and fun to fly into.

Orcas Island was one of the earliest Orbx sceneries, and the area itself is one of the favorites of reviewer Shawn Weigelt. The original version, though, was for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Shawn wanted a version for X-Plane. Well, that is now available and Shawn was very pleased to find that is lives up to expectations.

Robin Tannahill has been busy doing aircraft repaints for X-Plane and in this series of articles he shares his techniques. To be able to repaint you need basic skills in some graphics utility. In this part, he introduces GIMP, a freeware tool with lots of features, most important being layers, as you will learn when you read the tutorial.