I recently loaded a MD82 freeware which has a small problem concerning the usage of the radio tuning. That problem is solved with the help of another AVSIM member.But I would like to know more about how to tune gauges and panels that come with freewares. Whee is a good place to start to read documentation on how to create/modify panels and gauges. My problem for the moment is that I do not have a clear view of the overall picture on how the panel folder, the panel.cfg and the aircraft.cfg interact. What skills do I neeed: c++ ? SDK ? I have downloaded FSPanel Studio but I realize that there is more than that to tweak panels.Can anybody point me to the right direction to start this learning curve?

go herehttp://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimul...wnloads_sdk.aspand downloadAircraft Container SDKandPanels and Gauges SDKfor starters. C++ is helpful if you want to dig into programming *.gau style gauges, but the learning curve is VERY steep there if you don't know your way around C++ or programming in general. You can only create gau-style gauges from scratch or based on the sample in the panels and gauges SDK. You cannot decompile existing *.gau-style gauges, modify and recompile them. Apart from the bitmaps contained in such gauges. They can usually be extracted by a utility contained in gaubmp2.zip, but I believe FSPanel Studio can do that too.A great help for c++ gauge programming is Dai Griffith's Gaugehelp documentation, the most up-to-date on being sd2gau17.zipas far as I know.For the xml side of the gauge world check out the sticky thread at the top of this forum for starters. You only need wordpad, a paint program and a basic understanding of RPN to get going with XML gauge programming. But if you want to get real good at XML gauge programming it is also going to be a very steep learning curve. however, others here have already climbed quite high in that respect :)

Mathias,Thank you. I was afraid that nobody would ever answer me.My goal is only to understand what to do to make some panels and gauges work on some freeware A/C "delivered" incomplete. I do not wish to build panels and gauges.I will follow your advice.