FS2000 from Microsoft does contain its own flightplanner and many are or have been satisfied with it, but there have been a number of 3rd party flightplanners that offer more useable features and are far more user friendly to choose from as well. One of the most popular 3rd party flightplanners is FSNavigator 3.0 authored by Helge Schroeder! Though Helge has included an excellent set of documents with his "freeware" package, I'm going to display here a quick screenshot tutorial to get you started right away in using some of the more interesting features of FSNavigator 3.0!
Downloading & Installation of FSNavigator 3.0
First of all you need to download two files before using FSNav 3.0, the first being the program itself (fsnav300.zip available by link at AVSIM's VFR Flight Center page) plus the additional file fs2kdt60.zip by Dennis Thompson that will upgrade the database in FSNavigator 3.0 for use with FS2000. (FSNavigator 3.0 was designed for use with FS98.) The documents for installing FSNavigator 3.0 into your flight simulator are well covered with the download files from Helge Schroeder, so I won't go into that subject here.
Setting up a new FLIGHTPLAN:
We're going to be setting up a flight from Innsbruck, Austria to Pisa, Italy using a fairly fast turboprop twin (though you can use any aircraft you wish, as this flight planner can be used with virtually any aircraft you have installed into your flight sim including the default aircraft). For today's example though, I'm going to use a freeware aircraft I only recently installed into FS2000 and that's the Piaggio P180 Avanti painted in the Ferrari Factory colors (apparently the Ferrari Motorcar Company owns a couple of these particular aircraft). As a corporate pilot for Ferrari, you will be transporting a couple of Ferrari's Formula One drivers and their families from Austria down to Pisa, Italy for them to enjoy an off race weekend in one of Italy's more historic cities.
So fire up your FS2000 flight sim and once you've got your default starting point, you want to first choose the aircraft you're going to use for this trip. If you don't have the Piaggio P180 Avanti, that I'm using, pick another aircraft that you would like to use. It makes little difference which aircraft you use, as you can first set up your flightplan and then later input the aircraft type you'll be using for your flight and FSNav 3.0 will automatically adjust itself to the new aircraft (speeds, ETAs, and altitudes).
Whatever aircraft you've chosen, we will show you how to set it up (enter it as "New") in your FSNavigator flightplan later in this tutorial; but first, lets set the actual flightplan itself.
Once you've got FS2000 up and running, go to the dropdown menu under "World" at the top of your screen then click on "Go To Airport" and for today's example please select Innsbruck, Austria as your starting point.
Once your aircraft is at the runway in Innsbruck, we will start setting up our flightplan. We start by first striking the key "F9"! Just like the default flightplanner, the FSNav3.0 flightplanner/map should now be on your screen, but unlike the default planner, FSNav3.0 does not pause your flight sim and you may notice you can still hear your engine(s) in the background! During your flight, after we've installed our flightplan, you can even use this map to follow our aircraft's progress along its flight.
Now just take a look at this map and you will notice that pretty much the whole world is shown; but if you look closely, you can see your aircraft is sitting somewhere in Europe!
Using the "+" over on the lower right hand side of your screen (click on above thumbnail to see position of zoom button at the top of the lower right side toolbar) to zoom in on our aircraft at its starting position in Innsbruck. Most likely, as you zoom in closer and closer, you will no longer see your aircraft or any part of Europe either. So, located on the top "toolbar" you will notice a small button with a airplane icon on it. Click on this button and the map will automatically center itself over your aircraft sitting in Innsbruck!
As you move your mouse's cursor around on the screen, you notice that as you pass various points on the FSNav map, that small secondary windows pop up, indicating where or what your cursor is over. Move your cursor over the airport area until you see the following mini window!
Once you have this window up (shown above), right-click your mouse and you should see this window appear:
Now (once you've clicked on "To Flightplan") you will have entered the starting point for our flight to Piza into the flightplan and you should notice that this starting point appears at the top of our screen. Once you've got the starting position listed, you can then move along to the next waypoint (of your choice); right-click, then choose "To Flightplan"! Below I have already gone on ahead an clicked in 2 additional waypoints (notice I'm following that river headed east, as I know that I will need to gain some altitude before heading south over the Austrian Alps and down toward Italy!). At this point we need not worry about the actual numbers being installed (Vspeed, Altitude, Heading, IAS, etc.); this is because those numbers will automatically change or adjust to whatever aircraft we enter later!
Now it's simply a matter of continuing to enter waypoints in the same fashion (right-click our mouse and then click on "To Flightplan" for each waypoint/VOR station, along our entire route. When we're done doing that, we should have a map that appears something like the following:
Special Note: Once I started entering the waypoints into our flightplan at our destination, I had zoomed in the map for very close detail of the San Giusto Airport area in Piza, Italy. This was so I could enter in several waypoints that would line us up for the ILS on runway 4R! FSNavigator 3.0 allows you to enter in any waypoint or fix of your choosing and as you can see here, I've entered several waypoints or fixes that are imaginary or are not established navigation points. I merely put my cursor at a point or fix I wish, and then right-click my mouse and then click on "To Flightplan!"
Setting up our AIRCRAFT of choice into our Flightplan: Once we've got our flightplan all set, we're now ready to enter the information about our aircraft. As I mentioned before, I'm using a Piaggio 180 Avanti Turboprop for my example here, but you can do the same thing with any aircraft you choose (and is on your FS2000 menu list). If you've still got the FSNav 3.0 map on your screen – great – but in the event you've switched back to FS2000 (by striking the "F9" key, which toggles back and forth between your FSNav Map and FS2000)—you need to return to the FSNav 3.0 map at this time.
Look at the upper left side of your FSNav map and you should find the word "Plan" on your upper toolbar! Click on the word "Plan" and the following drop menu should appear:
Now move your cursor down this drop menu and highlight the word "Aircraft," which should bring the following window into the middle of your map:
Yes, you noticed that it's already set for a MD11, which is not the aircraft we're using on this trip, but if we click on the arrow (to the right of the line "MD11") we will get our aircraft list of those aircraft loaded into our flightplanner.
Well, my aircraft, the Piaggio 180 Avanti, is not on the list, so we will have to start a new file (New) and then Save it to FSNav3.0 for any later flights I may wish to make with it. To enter a new aircraft, we start by clicking on the New button and begin entering the correct numbers for that aircraft.
Once we get all the numbers corrected to whatever aircraft we're using (in this example I've set the cruise speed to 260 kts IAS, with the cruising altitude at FL280—plus all the other enteries like fuel flow rates, climb speed & rate, touchdown speed, etc.). If you're not sure about the correct numbers for the aircraft you've chosen for this flight, you can edit or modify these at anytime, including while you're on the flight itself! Just make sure to click on the Save button when you're done entering any numbers and remember to hit Save again, if you should edit these numbers at any time later! Oh yeah, be sure to click on "OK" before closing this screen or window, this is so FSNav will enter that aircraft (in my example it's the P-180 Avanti) into the flightplan!
Well, we're almost ready to start our trip, we've got our flightplan setup and we've got the aircraft we're going to use setup into the flightplan as well! So, let's get to it as our passengers and luggage are all loaded and they're waiting for us!
Our FLIGHT:
Well, now that we've got everything set (we've setup our flightplan and we've setup the aircraft we're using into that flightplan) we're now ready to start our trip. One of the things that FSNavigator 3.0 allows is your choice of you doing the flying along our route, or you can simply (once we've taken off) allow FSNav to fly the aircraft for you and you can just sit along as a passenger, enjoying the views!
At this point, let's return to our aircraft by again toggling or depressing the "F9" key and prepare our aircraft for take-off, just as you would anytime you fly in FS2000.
Here I'm leaving Innsbruck and I've established my rate of climb on a generally easterly heading! (I used a print out of my flightplan to set my autopilot to the headings listed for my first leg of my trip.)
Once I've got the aircraft stable and on its way, I've decided that I'm going to have FSNavigator 3.0 fly the aircraft on my trip, so that I can sit back and enjoy the scenic beauty of the Austrian and Italian Alps! To do this, I need to toggle back to my FSNav screen (depress "F9").
Once I have my FSNav screen up, I look over on the left-hand side of our FSNav screen, where we should see the following toobar, and notice that I have already depressed the "AP" or Autopilot button so next I need to click on the "Fly FP" (Fly Flightplan) button! As soon as you click the "Fly FP" button, FSNavigator 3.0 will take over and will begin using the aircraft's autopilot to fly the flightplan we've laid out and using the numbers (climb rate, cruise speeds, altitude, etc.) for the aircraft we have installed.
While flying along – with FSNav 3.0 flying the aircraft – I can switch from "cockpit" view to "spot view" so that I can get a good look at the excellent scenery over the Alps. Here we can see the Alps (far West in this screenshot) of Switzerland.
One of the options you have by using FSNav 3.0 to fly the aircraft for you is that you can follow along and watch your aircraft move on the filed flightplan, plus you can see remaining ETAs or anything relating to your flight. Here you can see how your aircraft icon (large blue circle) is moving along the established flightplan route, and by having the small aircraft icon clicked on (small blue circle) FSNav 3.0 will always keep our moving aircraft (on the FSNav 3.0 map) on screen. When the aircraft icon moves off the screen, FSNav 3.0 moves the map to re-center our moving icon on our map! In addition, FSNav 3.0 puts a red square around our next waypoint or fix position and gives our heading, IAS, rate of climb, and our expected altitude when we cross that waypoint. Other information given (not shown here) is distance between waypoints, estimated time of flight between waypoints, and frequencies (if our waypoint is a VOR or other electronic navigational aid).
While flying the route, we can watch as FSNav 3.0 switches our aircraft's radios to whatever is the correct frequency for our next waypoint. (in the example below, FSNav automatically set my NAV1 frequency to 116.40 for the AVIANO VOR or next waypoint along our trip from Innsbruck to Piza! (I know it's the next waypoint because FSNav 3.0 has placed a red square around the VOR icon for AVIANO on my flightplan.)
Finally, we've arrived in the Piza area; FSNav 3.0 is still flying our aircraft, and I will continue to allow it as it makes our pre-planned turn (out in the Med) back and hooked up on the ILS into runway 4R at San Giusto Airport.
At one mile out from touchdown I wanted to take over and manually land, so I simply clicked off the autopilot (from the cockpit view) which disconnected FSNav 3.0's control over our aircraft as well. If I were to turn our autopilot back on, FSNav 3.0 would no longer have control over it until we go back to the FSNav 3.0 map screen (by depressing F9) and clicking on the "Fly FP" button, as we did when we began this flight! We're done with FSNav 3.0 for now, so I'm going fly the aircraft manually into our landing from this point!
Well, here we are, safely at the San Giusto Airport Terminal in Piza, Italy and you can even see the "Leaning Tower" of Piza in the background! (And yes, that is the Ferrari symbol on the tail of my P-180 and this aircraft is painted in Ferrari's factory colors of one of their 2 Piaggio 180 Avanti's that they own).
I hope this has helped at getting you started with understanding just some of the features of FSNavigator 3.0 and how it should make each of your FS2000 trips easier and more enjoyable!
The only thing left is that when you quit FS2000, FSNav 3.0 will ask if you wish to save this flightplan and I would suggest that you do. You can come up with whatever file name you wish, but by saving it, you can at anytime in the future, re-fly this same trip with any aircraft you wish. (To change aircraft in the future, you merely have to click on "Aircraft" on the pull down menu under "Plan" from your FSNav 3.0 map screen, which we got to by depressing "F9" when we have FS2000 up and running, it's that easy!) Another reason for saving this flightplan is so that you can also share it with other flight simmers that also use FSNav 3.0. You can find the file by looking in your FS2000 "Modules" folder and then in the FSNav30 folder there!
I use FSNavigator 3.0 for all my trips, no matter which aircraft I'm flying and even when I'm flying a simple VFR trip I use this excellent flightplanner! Give it a try, I'm sure you'll like it!
...Bear!
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