I am in the process of learning the PMDG 747-400/400F. Published lessons help a lot.Now I am creating may own flight plans but cannot get the FS ATC to agree. Default FS flight planning seems to be needed. I also want to use SID and STAR. How do I make ATC recognize and follow my PMDG-plans? Is there any add-on ATC that works bettar than the default in FS?I run FS 2004 (9.1) with Traffic 2005, FSUIPC (latest), FS-Meteo and Wx500.I use flight plans from RouteFinder (http://rfinder.asalink.net)Any advise appreciated./Lars

sure is, check this out www.vatsim.net and www.squawkbox.ca You need to join vatsim then use squawkbox aka SB 3.1 with FS. I could never go back to AI ATC again.

FSBuild is a flight planner tool. IF you plan using this tool, You can set it up such that it would save not only the PMDG Flight plan, it would also save a version for the default flight planner, and also for Radar contact (ATC) if you are using that, and more.When you load the flight planner into the PMDG FMC, you can also load the default flight planner into FS9.As far as STAR and DPs are concerned, yes..FSBuild has that. and STARs and DPs are nothing but a set of way points. So like I said, when you plan in FSBuild, your flight plan would include all those STAR and DPs way points as well.Hope this helps.MannyPS: For a good IFR ATC check out Radar Contact. (It has no VFR ATC and no ground control as yet). http://www.jdtllc.com/Radar contact forum is right here at AVSIM: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=135FS Build Flight Planner: http://www.fsbuild.com/

Many thanks for your replies.FSBuild looks interesting. Can I keep the add-ons that I already have or should I delete any of them to make FSBuild work?/Lars

Lars,I use FSnav and Radar Contact v.4. I construct my flight plan with FSnav, export it to FS2004, fire up Radar Contact and import the flight plan wiht all SIDS and STARS and find that most pleasing and real.FSnav will also export your flight plan directly into your PMDG 737 or 747 FMC.

Do not know if this will suit you, but stick your route into free www.fsroute.com and it will output an fs9 format version that default ATC will recognize.Otherwise as stated fsnav and fsbuild seem to be the best most featureful planners around.Mark

Hi !If u don't want to spend money on the payware flightplanners there is a way around it...You can plan in RouteFinder http://rfinder.asalink.net/. Copy/paste the route into FSRoute http://www.fsroute.com/default.aspExport the plan (sometimes after correcting it according to latest AIRAC used by FSRoute) to FS9 (you will get your default ATC) AND to PMDG.To get the PMDG-plan to work with 747/747F you need to add a 0-line on every waypoint and the dep and arr airport in the flightplan in C:ProgramMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator 9PMDGFLIGHTPLANS (My location). Just open it with a texteditor (wordpad or notebook etc) and add this extra line with a 0 as below:__________________________________________________PMDG737NGFMC *2.1*34EKCH1DIRECT1 N 55.6179 E 12.6560 17-----10117--1000000-10000000000000000000000000 // This one is addedSORGA2UT5011 N 55.9815 E 11.8140 00000000000000000000000 // This one is added--and so on and on thru the waypoints.....________________________________________________________There should be 19 zeros to work with PMDG 747. The 737 only uses 18 lines.Takes maybe 1-2 minutes to do this even on a long flightplan with lots of wpt's...Hope my explanation makes sense..... ?Good luckA.J.