For those of you who are looking to amass a good stable of GA AI aircraft (which are somewhat underrepresented, relative to airliners) and want to add a little more variety to the interminalble "Cessna," "Mooney," "King Air," "Cherokee," and "Learjet" calls on ATC, I highly recommend Chuck Dome and Mike Stone's FSDS2 and Gmax aircraft, which consist of Falcon 2000s, Challengers, Adam A500/700s, Queen Airs, Aerostars and more!!! Along with some of the GA flightplans available from the net, which further populate the skies with those planes, the enhancement to the flight simulator experience is awesome. I've been a devoted user of these two artist's planes for AI purposes since FS2002, and have observed most of them in action in FS9, and they work beautifully as AI planes. As a matter of fact, some of them work as well or better than any AI planes, of any type, and by any artists, that I've seen. Those that I've taken for a spin are quite flyable as well. By the way, as many of you probably know, Mike Stone just released a gorgeous Jetstar II model, though I haven't had the chance to see how it works as an AI plane. I know from personal experience that designing and building a simulator aircraft (and scenery) is not child's play. It takes as much patience, technical acumen, and dedication as just about any hobby out there. If ever there is a Flight Simulator Hall of Fame established, I nominate these two gentlemen/artists as among the greats. They not only produce a tremendous quantity of quality work, they are generous enough to share it with all of us. :-yellow1

Thanks for the tip, but personally I have found both sets of aircraft rather heavy on the frames. I used the falcon 2000 for several airports in FS2002 and the hit was very pronounced for AI, even more so with Chucks work, probably due to the VCs. Just tried his Citation X for AI the other day and it was totally to heavy, but a very nice model. Would be nice if they could strip down the polys on some of their birds and release tham as AI, would be great!While I don't fly any of their aircraft, I will give them kudos for being pioneers in the community, producing them, and sharing with us all. Mike's aircraft have beautiful exteriors, the lack of VCs is what keeps me from them (I love his Goose, just need a VC)( and yes, I know what is involved in designing)Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://mysite.verizon.net/res052cd/mybannercva1.jpgCalVirAir International VAwww.calvirair.comCougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviationwww.cgrmtnhelos.com

Good point there--I should have mentioned the caveat re: the possible impact on frame rates. Their suitability would definitely depend on one's system, especially since I'm pretty sure that those beauties weren't necessarily designed for AI. It would be great to have a Project AI type group dedicated to producing frame rate-friendly GA aircraft (though I do, with all of us, give daily and fervent thanks for all of the AI airliners that are available out there, and for the dedication of those who put them out there:-beerchug). Indeed, there are something like a dozen versions of Citations flying now alone, to say nothing of the number of versions of Lears (there are still some classic Lear 23s flying)!! In the interim, Messrs. Dome and Stone's planes have proven to be a good alternative to consider. (Also, there are a couple of Challengers, designed specifically for AI, that were just released as freeware over the last couple of weeks). By the way, on my old machine (a 1.4 GHz, 512 Mb RAM) machine, I used both guys' planes (a lot of Mike Stone's 757s among them) without too much of a penalty--though I made a point of staying away from busy hub airports.