whats the best way and program to place the pilots name under the cockpit window?

For default skins, you cannot really except maybe as noseart.

For any named skin, open the skin file in any image editor (gimp is free) locate the pilots window for the side of the plane you want a name to appear and type a name under it. Then save it as a 256 color indexed bmp.

Where are the default (un-named) skins located?
I'd like to extract them and possibly use them as a basis to create some void.bmp files.

Thanks fellers,

wt

You can't view default skins (only very few of them already in Paintschemes folder) are exception.

You can however download some skins that you like (perhaps generic historical skins) and make a little tweakings such is adding your name below cockpit or something in phostoshop.
That would take a few minutes.