If you've learned to use Plane Maker, you know how to create and add aircraft of your own design to X-Plane. But Plane Maker's built-in abilities limit the shapes you can use. To create truly realistic aircraft you need to go beyond Plane Maker and use a 3D CAD program like SketchUp to create the parts you need. In this tutorial Ray Hill goes over the basics of how such parts are created and then integrated into Plane Maker aircraft.

While the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 was not a particularly successful model in the real world, quite a few of them still carry on, mostly in freight service. For flight simulator pilots it provides and interesting and challenging large jet to fly, with some unusual handling characteristics. Reviewer Meng Yu puts it through its paces and offers his reactions.

The Where In The World series challenge from Ron Blehm continues. Last month was a bit of a trick question, as the airport name did not match the city of its location. This month Ron offers a favorite location from his past, with several clues and pictures. Can you figure out where it is?

Just announced today at FSExpo by Thrustmaster is their HOTAS F/A-18C Hornet Grip. This innovative product lets you customize your joystick. A common joystick base can take various grips that are exact matches for real world aircraft. This one matches the F/A-18C Hornet and is compatible with two previously available bases. Reviewer Raymond Andersen was very impressed with the build quality and usability of the grip and highly recommends it.

Jay, AKA MrYorkiesWorld has been building a reputation for himself as an avid flight simulator video producer on Youtube. In this article he tells us how he does it, mixing a busy family life with two small children, with his lifelong passion for aviation.

Carenado is well known for creating great looking aircraft and their A42-500 twin-turboprop airliner is no exception. Reviewer Meng Yu was impressed with the look and flying ability of this FSX/P3D aircraft and found it had a nice tradeoff between realism and complexity, making it manageable for the average flight simulator pilot. He also found the systems modeling impressive, with the inclusion of things like "hotel mode" which is unique to this aircraft.

Delays are a part of life and certainly of airplane travel, though in our virtual flight simulator world we can avoid them. Air Force and airline pilot Tony Vallillo had plenty of experience with delays in his career, both natural and man-made. Here he shares some of his flying stories as well as looking into the things that cause airplanes to be delayed.

Since X-Plane comes with a Baron, do we really need another one? Reviewer Stuart McGregor tried the B58 Baron created by Carenado for X-Plane 11 and found the improvements and additions over the default plane well worth while. He enjoyed flying the plane whether VFR or IFR and even with VR and overall found it to be a beautifully implemented twin-engine GA aircraft.

Flight simulators pilots looking to move up from basic single engine aircraft will find planes like the Duchess Model 76 a good next step. The plane, created for FSX and Prepar3D by Just Flight offers the additional speed and performance that makes flight more challenging. Reviewer Alex Dickinson found some things he did not like, but overall felt that any pilot would enjoy flying this beautiful aircraft.

Since its initial release as freeware some years ago, the iFly Jets 747-400 has been a highly regarded aircraft for FSX. Its latest version offers more features and aircraft variants, including the -8i model and BCF cargo model. Reviewer Meng Yu enjoyed flying the heavy aircraft, finding the graphics stunning, the systems well documented and overall very much worthwhile for beginners and veteran flight simulator pilots alike.