seems to me that most of the aircraft plugins are unusable

All right, It's time for a patented FEM super extensive list of instructions

1. Download the plane
1.a- Make a folder in like My Documents, or if you have a 2nd hard drive, put one there. Call it FS Downloads

2. Download the plane to FS Downloads

3. Extract the plane there. we'll call it 777.zip
3a) Extract 777.zip
3b) you'll see a folder called 777

4. Open this folder
5. If the designer has a decent head on his/her shoulders, you SHOULD see the Model, Panel, Sound folders.

ALTERNATE STEP 5. If the designer wanted to complicate things, he'd put all those folders in a SECOND 777 Folder. If, when you open the 777 folder, and you see another 777 folder, open it.

Alt. Step 5a) If you see Model, Panel Sound and what have you, go to step 6.
Alt Step 5b) if you see ANOTHER 777 folder, delete that addon right now, it's not worth the work.

6. Copy the 777 folder (The one that contains the Model, Panel Sound and what have you)

7. Paste this folder into the FS9 Aircraft folder.

8. Check the Panel Folder, if all you see is a Panel.cfg file, open it, using notepad. make SURE it's set to have an alternate panel that you have.

Ex. It'll look like this

[fltsim]
alias=b737_400\panel

This is OK like this.
If it says like 777, or 747, it's fine, cause you have the aircraft as default.

If it has a custom panel, copy all the gauges files to the FS9 gauges folder.

If you have NO SOUND, copy the default B737's sound folder into the new aircraft's main folder

This should iron out the problems

remember that the 777 file was an EXAMPLE, so use this as a guide to the other's you download

If you have other problems, contact me at
big_beia@hotmail.com

I don't check the forums as often as I used to, so email is your best bet

😀 That should do it 👍

FEM can I add that to the sticky "how to install"?

Thanks Captain FEM, it really helps, but by what you said " if you see ANOTHER 777 folder, delete that addon right now, it's not worth the work", almost half of them should be deleted. Some with the gauge folder attached, so I open it, select all and paste to the FS9 gauge folder, but some files already exist so I dont know if I should overwrite. Some gauge folders have sub-folders, should I copy & paste all the files in these sub-folders?

even the top rated F14 model gives me trouble using the gauges and retracting gears. and also the newest A380, folder structure seems to be messed up. if it works for you, let me know, I try it again.

TTT, you can go ahead and add it wherever you wish.