Arduino Sketch Development for Flight Simulator Hardware

I'm currently trying to develop some flight simulator hardware (primarily X-Plane\FSX). I would like to utilize the Arduino Leonardo board as the primary interface, as it seems to be a good fit. I'm making good progress on the mechanical engineering and prototyping of the hardware, but my programming is minimal at best. My needs are fairly simple. A: I would like (3) 10k sliding potentiometers to be easily and universally recognized without drivers. Each potentiometer essentially acts an an axis, controlling 3 independent features of an aircraft (Throttle, Propellor, and Mixture) B: My second device would be controlling the flaps feature of an airplane. This feature will utilize a 4 position rotary switch. When rotated one direction, flaps go down, but when rotated backwards, flaps are told to go up one notch at a time. Essentially, the switch has 1 ground and (4)contacts (one for each position), so the board needs to be able to differentiate up from down. For any of those who are familiar with X-Plane, you can assign 2 buttons for flaps: Flaps up, or flaps down. If there was an independent designation for each degree of flaps, I would be able to handle it, as I can assign buttons on this board, just can't really figure anything else out. Anyhow, that's about it. I don't have a very big budget (just trying to work with what I got) If you're interested, please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. Thanks!