Howto Back to Basics - The MS Flight Planner

[allardjd 1,853]

Back to Basics

Flight Planning With the MS Flight Planner

by John Allard

 

This piece in the Back to Basics series will explore using the MSFS Flight Planner utility to create, edit, save and load FS flight plans. This month I’ll stick to FS9 screenshots for illustrations, but Flight Planning in FSX is virtually identical. The FSX screens are slightly different in appearance but not in function.

 

Though there are a number of freeware and payware add-on flight planning utilities for Flight Simulator, the one built into FS itself is fairly decent and works quite well within its design limits. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some of the successors, but for plotting a course between A and B, including the flexibility to add or delete waypoints, etc, it works just fine. Once created, the plan can be saved to load in a later session; the planned route and waypoints will appear on the Kneeboard and will be automatically loaded into the FS Garmin GPS.

 

Before invoking the FS Flight Planner, it is best to select your desired aircraft, since the planner will use performance data from the current aircraft to populate certain fields of information on the Nav Log page. The AC type will not appear anywhere on the Nav Log page but the speeds, times, fuel burn data, etc, will reflect the selected AC.

 

The FS Flight Planner is accessed via the FS Top-Line Menu -> Flights -> Flight Planner

 

Entering the FS Flight Planner

 

The Planner screen has two tabs at the top, Create and Edit. Create, as implied, creates a new plan very quickly and easily – more below about the details. It is also where a plan is saved and where a saved plan can be recalled (e.g. loaded). The active plan on the Flight Planner will be the active plan when you exit out of it and return to the cockpit, unless you exit via the Cancel button. You’ll be offered an opportunity to save the plan when exiting the planner. You’ll find what you did in the Planner already in the GPS and if you pull up the Kneeboard you’ll find the Nav Log page is there too.

 

Flight Planner Create Tab

 

Kneeboard and GPS

 

The Edit tab of the planner allows you to modify your plan, primarily by adding and deleting waypoints and specifying the cruise altitude for the flight. You can save your plan or load a saved one from this tab too and can view and print the Nav Log page.

 

Let’s begin at the Create Tab page. The screen is divided into five numbered panes that you would typically use, oddly enough, in the numbered order.

 

Pane 1: Choose departure location - Specifies the departure airport and the departure location on that airport. Pressing the Select button brings up the standard FS Airport selection screen and you pick the airport exactly as you would in the FS Create-A-Flight utility. The start position is selected from the “Runway/Starting position” list box at the bottom left. If there are parking spots defined at the airport, they will be listed too. If not you’ll be limited to the individual runways as starting position choices.

 

Pane 2: Choose destination - This is pretty much a ditto of the screen for selecting the departure airport with one exception – the pull-down list box for starting location is absent. You only get to specify the airport. Where you park is up to you when you get there. Also, specifying an arrival runway is not done at this time – that’s an in-flight operation that occurs as you near the destination. The arrival airport is part of the FS flight plan – the arrival runway and parking spot are not.

 

Pane 3: Choose flight plan type – This is a simple binary choice with a pair of Radio Buttons to implement your desire. Select either a VFR or an IFR flight plan. If you don’t know the difference, select VFR. This selection doesn’t have much of an effect in FS unless you are using the ATC (Air Traffic Control) option while flying. ATC will handle you differently based on this selection. That aside, it’s moot.

 

Pane 4: Choose routing – This time there are 4 Radio Buttons; Direct – GPS; Low altitude airways; High altitude airways; VOR to VOR. Lets take them in order…

 

The Direct GPS option will give you a straight line on the map between the two airports with no waypoints in between. It’s the shortest path (and is a Great Circle path, by the way) but provides little in the way of helpful enroute information. Your autopilot can follow this via GPS making navigation incredibly easy.

 

The Low altitude airways option will mainly follow the Victor Airways. Victor Airways are aviation authority defined highways in the sky, intended for navigation below 18,000 feet. They are visible on the FS map and in the map on the Flight Planner Edit tab if the “V” button above the map is On, i.e. is green. They have catchy names like “V199”. Where your course line overlies them, the lines will be impossible to see. Your flight plan routing under this option will take you from your departure airport to intercept a Victor Airway appropriate to your route of flight. Your plan route will follow their meandering path from VOR to VOR (only certain VORs lie on the Victor Airways – others will be ignored). The plan route may also include named Intersections at intervals between the VORs. In most cases the route will not require a heading change at Intersections, though sometimes it will. Your plan route will leave the Victor airways system at some point near your destination.

 

The High altitude airways option is very similar to the Low altitude airways described above, except that they use the Jet Airways, intended for navigation at and above 18,000 feet. Those have “J” names and their own “J” button above the map to turn them on and off in the map display. Aside from those things, they are essentially identical to the Victor Airways and the Low altitude option.

 

The final Radio Button in pane 4 is for VOR to VOR navigation. This is much like the previous two but will use any and all VORs, whether on the Airways or not. VORs will be chosen to approximate a straight-line route to your destination but it will still be a somewhat zig-zag path.

 

It bears mentioning that in FS you may use any of the four routing options with either VFR or IFR flight plan type. You can fly High-altitude Airways at low altitudes and vice versa – just don’t expect to get a clearance to do that in the real world.

 

Pane 5: Plot flight plan – With the first four panes filled in with your selections, pressing the “Find Route” button in the fifth pane actually generates the plan and will take you automatically to the Edit tab.

 

Flight Planner Edit Tab

 

The Edit tab allows you to see a pictorial and tabular view of your flight plan. On the left is a typical FS map with your flight plan showing on it as a red line. If you’ve used the FS Map page before, navigation of it will be familiar. The map may be panned by moving the mouse pointer to an edge or a corner and left clicking when a broad arrow appears. Buttons above the map toggle certain entities between being displayed or not displayed on the map. The first four buttons on the left are for zoom (+ and -), returning to normal zoom with the entire flight plan in view and for printing. If you select the latter be sure you have plenty of ink, unless you’re printing to a file.

 

On the right side of the Edit tab page is a tabular list of your flight plan waypoints, with a scroll bar if there are too many to display on one screen. Individual waypoints may be selected by clicking on the list to highlight one item. If the map is zoomed, clicking on a waypoint in the list centers the map on that waypoint. A “Delete Waypoint” button below the list removes the selected waypoint from the plan route. Waypoints may be added by left-clicking on the red route line on the map and dragging and dropping the line on a map icon for an intersection, Waypoint, NDB, VOR or airport. The new waypoint will be added in the list and reflected in the flight plan. This method is the only way to include NDBs and intermediate airports as waypoints in a flight plan – the default plan options will not include them but the Edit page allows you to add them manually if you care to. Though they can be displayed on the map, ILSs and Marker Beacons cannot be used as flight plan waypoints.

 

Cruise altitude for the flight is set by a scroll box below the map.

 

Four identical buttons appear across the bottom of both the CREATE and EDIT tabs of the flight planner. They are, Save…; Load…: Clear; NavLog. They’re reasonably intuitive…

 

The Buttons – Both Planner Tab Pages

 

Save – Gives you an opportunity to select a filename and location and saves the current plan as a PLN file.

 

Load – Retrieves a saved flight plan, allowing you to navigate to the folder of your choice to find it. Loading a file also makes it the active plan and places it in the FS Kneeboard and GPS.

 

Clear – Blanks out the current plan and presents you with a blank planner screen for creating a new one. Clearing a flight plan does not affect the file on disk if it has been previously saved.

 

NavLog – Takes you to the Nav Log page for viewing or printing. This is a tabular view of your flight plan with distance, speed, altitude, fuel and time information and blanks for recording actual values in flight. The view that is displayed on the Nav Log page is identical to what will appear on the FS Kneeboard Nav Log page once you are back in the cockpit view.

 

So, it’s not exactly FS Commander or Plan-G, but it’s functional, easy to use, bug free and if your flight plan needs are modest, may very well be all you need. Best of all, you already own it.

[mutley 4,487]

Bravo, a very informative and well written article, thanks!

[fatbird 0]

Another excellent tutorial!

 

I also use the flight planner a lot, sometimes directly, sometimes trough FS Commander 9.2, saving the ".pln" archives in the appropriate folder.

 

I just use Direct – GPS, because the airways are not updated anymore, so I prepare a route, using updated data.

 

When I want to keep the flight plan for further use, I normally change waypoint names. I don`t like Fix01, Fix02…

 

I got the most part of my routes in http://rfinder.asalink.net/free/ selecting the last Airac.

 

If I have to change my flight plan in-flight, provided I have enough time to do it, I ask George to fly for me and normally make the changes directly in the flight planner, save it, reload, activate the appropriate route segment and continue flying with the GPS 500 (I never use GPSMAP 295).

 

I'd like to ask you something, John.

 

My “Nav Log” distances, for some stupid reason, are in Km rather than NM, and I cannot find out how to change it. Have you any idea about this?

 

Probably this happens because my FSX is the Spanish version…

 

Pedro

[allardjd 1,853]

Pedro,

 

I'm away from home with only a laptop and don't have FS available on this machine.  I'll have a look when I get home on Saturday evening.  In the meantime, it may be that someone else will discover this and be able to answer your question.

 

John

[brett 2,284]

Hi Pedro, Look in your FSX Settings/General/International/Units of Measure and change it to U.S. System (feet and inches). I have not tried it to see if this affects the GPS but it's worth a shot.

[fatbird 0]

Hi Brett and John

 

First of all, thank you for your quick answers.

 

 

 

Brett you are completely right! It worked.

I use Hybrid (milibars, feet), and I think it is very stupid to use Km. I associate feet to NM and meters to Km. I don`t think Russians agree...

 

At least they should have made it opcional.

 

I need milbars (hectopascals) rather than In and NM instead of Km.

 

Now I must find out where is the config file where I can combine milibars with NM... Shure that exists somewhere :-)

 

 

Pedro






 

 

 

[britfrog 180]

well written and informative well done

 

[Andrew Godden 934]

Pedro,

 

The "Units of Measure" drop down selection in "International" under "Settings - General" relates to pressure and altitude and Nav Log distance.  By choosing Hybrid (feet, millibars) it provides pressure in millibars, altitude in feet and Nav Log distances in NM.  However, changing this setting has no impact on the the GPS unit of measure and I believe this is hard coded into the gauge design.

 

Cheers

Andrew

[fatbird 0]

Pedro,

 

The "Units of Measure" drop down selection in "International" under "Settings - General" relates to pressure and altitude and Nav Log distance.  By choosing Hybrid (feet, millibars) it provides pressure in millibars, altitude in feet and Nav Log distances in NM.  However, changing this setting has no impact on the the GPS unit of measure and I believe this is hard coded into the gauge design.

 

Cheers

Andrew

 

That is very strange...

 

When I selected U.S. System (feet and inches), as sugested by Brett, the distance unit changed to NM, so it seems to have impact on the GPS unit measure.

 

When I returned to Hybrid (milibars, feet), the unit changed again to Km.

But don't waste more your time with this. It's a minor problem.

 

I'll change to U.S. System, print the "Nav Log" in pdf format and return to Hybrid. It's not very practical but it works :-).

 

Thank you very much to all of you.

 

Pedro