737NG, FSnavigator, FMC & radar contact

[Guest dougjc]

I have just started flying the 737NG. I'm still struggling a bit with the FMC but I'm sure I'll get it eventually. It may be my inexperience, but there seems to be some room to get a little snookered up using all these tools at my disposal. I used FSnavigator (FSN) to build a short flight plan from Portland to Seattle. I used the SIDs, STARS but I know FSN doesnt update them anymore. I then exported/imported this route to FS9, radar contact & the 737 FMC. Of course, I have updated the 737 AIRFAC file so that has the latest & greatest. But I am unsure whether this might cause any issues.After departing and being kinda confused the FMC seemed to be tracking the flight plan. Of course at some point, radar contact ATC then started providing altitudes & vectors not in alignment with the FMC. At that point I shutdown the FMC and just used the AP w/heading & altitude to approach and land at Seattle. Anyway, am I fighting a losing battle or will this all make sense after a while?

[downscc 1,327]

Radar Contact is a good product, but you need to tell it to leave you alone (I forget the exact wording) to fly the departures and arrivals as published. Too bad, really.I assume your flightplan was BTG OLM OLM5. The KPDX departures are mostly vectors, but arriving at KSEA you'll be expected to fly the arrival until vectors to final. That's the real world, but in the sim world I've found no ATC service "real" enough (I've been flying since 1974, I haven't tried VATSIM) so I started writing SIDSTARS to fill the gap. The procedures I've written for KPDX and KSEA (and 64 other locations) have "as published" options for flying with an ATC service that lets you fly the procedure and there are NOATC options for self-navigation that is as real as data at flightaware and my own experience can make it.My favorite trip for learning the FMC is KLAS-KLAX.. it is a RNAV SID flown to HEC VOR then a STAR flown to the ILS. There are many others that exist (SID-VOR-STAR), but this one has nice scenery.You are not losing the battle, you're already trying to figure things out that you didn't even know were issues not long ago.Check out flightaware.com for current (US) flight plans, the article on SIDSTARS in the PMDG OPS wiki section, and try my SIDSTARS located in the AVSIM FS2004-Flight Plans library.Happy contrails. Oh yes, you gotta use your real name in this forum.