Welcome to my little spot on the Web. As you're here you are obviously seeking help. I hope you will find at least some of the answers.

You might well ask who I am & question my qualifications to offer help so here is a short introduction.

My name is Doug Attrell - known on the Simviation forums as Grumpy1 & - more recently - Hagar.
I live in the south of England in the UK, where I was born & have lived all my life. Until taking early retirement a few years ago I spent my working life in the aircraft industry. I am an aircraft engineer by profession having also flown in many types of aircraft over the years. I learned to fly both gliders & powered light aircraft in my younger days, although my licences are no longer valid. I've been flying & instructing on radio-controlled gliders & powered model aircraft since1980.
Despite my Grumpy nickname I am noted for my patience, especially where young people & beginners are concerned.
I also have an odd sense of humour which sometimes gets me into trouble. ;-)

My credentials

I am not a professional. This is my hobby. For the last 7 years I have been interested in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. I have all versions (including Combat Flight Simulator) from FS98 thru FS2004.

I was Combat Flight Simulator Editor at Simviation for something like 3 years & still take an active part on the forums. An important part of the job was supporting the files posted in all areas of the site & fixing problems. I've helped a lot of newcomers get started in the hobby & have plenty of experience with all the common problems & troubleshooting others in all the MS sims. To begin with I had all of the difficulties that most newcomers to this hobby are faced with & a few more besides. It was by fixing them for myself that I learned how to help others do the same. I have been doing so on a regular basis ever since. Many of my own tutorials featured here started life as detailed answers to beginners' questions, either on the forums or via E-mail. I'm more interested in the development side of the hobby these days & have worked with many respected FS designers. This means I'm familiar with common problems from both sides of the fence. I'm not a programmer & have little knowledge of hardware apart from the basics. I'm committed to Freeware & Simviation so don't support commercial addons or files posted on other sites. They should have their own support staff.

Note: I do not support CFS3 as it will not run at all well on my system. The basic principles for installing aircraft & scenery to FS2004 are the same as for FS2002 so the same tutes apply. Earlier FS2002 aircraft are not fully compatible with FS2004 (FS9). The later examples created with FSDS2 or Gmax should be fine. Most FS2004 aircraft should also work in FS2002.

Getting started

Downloading addons & installing them to any version of FS is the first time many people of all ages & experience will look at the inner workings of Windows. This is naturally a little daunting at first. Once you realise how simple most things are it will not only become easy but you will also learn a lot about your PC. Installing addons mainly involves moving files & folders from one location to another. A little knowledge of basic word processing will be useful for editing text files. Providing you confine your activities to the simulator program & the user areas, keeping away from the Windows System folder, it should not do any serious or permanent harm.

Computers are nothing if not logical. This is how they work. If you approach things in the correct way most problems can be explained. There is usually a logical answer to any problem however serious it might appear. It's often the simple things that are overlooked so start there first, even if it seems too obvious.

All this will be so much easier if you understand a few Windows basics & set up Windows to work in the way that suits you. This involves changing a few simple options. No matter how experienced you might think you are I urge you to read my Windows Basics article before attempting to install anything to the sims. A few minutes spent on this now could save many hours of frustration in the future.