SR-71 add-on not showing up in FSX Gold Edition on Windows 7

SR-71 not showing in FSX Gold (Win7) – things to check

If the airplane folders are in place but the SR-71 never appears in the aircraft selection list, it almost always comes down to one of these: wrong FSX install location, missing/incorrect aircraft.cfg entries, or the aircraft got installed to the wrong “SimObjects” path.

Here’s what I’d do, step by step.

1) Confirm it actually installed into the FSX “SimObjects\\Airplanes” folder
In FSX, the default location is typically:
...\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\SimObjects\Airplanes\

Inside Airplanes, you should see a folder for the SR-71 (whatever it’s named). Open that SR-71 folder and confirm you have at least:

• aircraft.cfg
• model\ folder (with a .mdl file inside)
• panel\ folder
• sound\ folder (sometimes aliased, but the folder should exist)
• texture\ folder(s)

If any of those key pieces are missing (especially aircraft.cfg or the model folder contents), FSX won’t list it.

2) Check the aircraft.cfg for valid “fltsim” entries
Open:
...\SimObjects\Airplanes\<SR-71 folder>\aircraft.cfg

Make sure you have at least one section like:
[fltsim.0]

If the file has no [fltsim.x] sections, or they’re numbered incorrectly (for example it starts at [fltsim.1] and there’s no [fltsim.0]), FSX can ignore it.

Also check these lines inside each [fltsim] entry:

• title= must be unique (no duplicate “title=” matching another installed aircraft)
• model= must match an actual subfolder name under model (or be blank if it uses the base model\)
• texture= must match an actual texture folder name (or be blank if it uses texture\)

A common one is texture=Something but the folder is actually named texture.something with different spelling/case.

3) Make sure FSX is looking at the right SimObjects path
This is more common on “Gold/Accel” systems where folks have multiple FSX installs or moved folders around.

Check your FSX.cfg and confirm the SimObjects entries include the default Airplanes path. In Win7 it’s usually here:
C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\FSX.cfg

In FSX.cfg, look for the [Main] section and see if you have something like:
SimObjectPaths.0=SimObjects\Airplanes

If that line is missing or has been edited to point somewhere else, aircraft in the “normal” Airplanes folder won’t show.

4) Quick sanity check inside FSX
In the aircraft selection screen, make sure you’re not filtering it out. For example, if you’re sorting by manufacturer/type and the add-on used a weird manufacturer name, it’ll be easy to miss. Try switching the list to show “All” entries (no filtering) and then look again.

A few quick questions so we can narrow it down

• Which SR-71 package is it (developer/name) and how did you install it (installer vs manual copy)?
• What exact folder name did it create under SimObjects\Airplanes?
• Does that folder contain aircraft.cfg and a model folder with a .mdl inside?
• Do you have more than one FSX installed (or FSX + Steam Edition), or is it just FSX Gold?

If you paste the first [fltsim.0] section from the SR-71’s aircraft.cfg (just that block), I can usually spot the issue immediately.