When I tried to repaint the default 737 in my VA's colors it worked out perfectly, except only one side of the fuselage shows the whole name. The other side shows up as a backwards version of just the first letter of what I typed, not the whole name. Am I doing something wrong? Is this usual? Thanks in advance for any help.

The default aircraft are infamous for their shared texture mapping. To save performance MS mapped parts of the aircraft to the same segment, what this means is that painting on one part will reproduce on the aircraft in more than one location. This is generally found on the fuselage (as you've discovered). They will sometimes make small segments of the fuselage have two sides so suit their own needs (which could be the case for the missing part of the text). In short I'd advise you to stay away from the default aircraft painting wise, they'll only cause headaches :)

Ah! Thanks, I actually figured it out right after I read that. Thanks much.