DaveB wrote:Mike..
Now tell him what else you did to make FSX see the Aircraft folder in the FSX root directory
ATB
DaveB

Dave, I don't know enough about the innards of FSX or FS9 to be fiddling around under the bonnet.
I installed FSX to C:\FS10 on 27-9-2012. The properties for C:\FS10\Aircraft show it was created on 3-10-2012.
Now that corresponds to the installation date of a Stinson Reliant (from Brian Gladden). I got the original zip back from an external drive today, and on trying to unzip it I found it doesn't behave like other zip files. On this machine (win7x64), if I right click a zip file, the menu offers me "Extract All". For this file, it offers 'Open' and 'Explore' but not 'Extract..'
The readme says "Unzip to your main FS folder' but since it wouldn't unzip, I must have used Open and simply copied the folders into FS10 - that explains how the Aircraft folder was created. At this range I honestly don't remember exactly, but when the Stinson showed up in the selection menu, that was fine by me, so I left it there.
Since then, I have found that older FS2004 models which are unhappy in FS10\SimObjects\Airplanes often work OK if I move them to FS10\Aircraft. Why is this so? I haven't the foggiest.
MikeW