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Speedbyrd

FS BUILD flight planner.... yes or no?

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This looks like a good flight planner, but like FS Navigator it looks like it's about to leave us. I don't see much going on with it for the past couple of years now. I like the idea you can get trans-ocean tracks and that you can export plans to FS Navigator which is still my planner of choice. I had thought you could do this FS Commander but it seems you can't and that's a disappointment.FS Build is relatively inexpensive. Should I take the plunge?

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Hi,Yes go for it if you are a serious sim pilot. If you feel like preparing your flight seriously you definitely should have this add-on. FS Build is more a flight planner / exporter of flight plans to various addons than a moving map. Therefore you can use both at the same time. There are actually very few add-ons which are not covered by FS build when it comes to exporting flight plans. Fuel calculation is fairly accurate and wind components are taken into consideration too. If you are more a Boeing 747-400 oriented pilot I would also recommend using Topcat available at http://www.topcatsim.com/ and Danur's FOC available at http://www.danur.com whereby the latter is quite expensive and its learning curve very steep. However the three programs used together would give you a fairly professional real world like Dispatch/ flight planning set.Best regards

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I went with FS Build after leaving FSNav and I am happy with it. It isn't quite suited to general aviation flying as much, but it still works just fine for that. It can import flight plans from the Routefinder website which is very nice. The best thing with FSbuild is that it works outside of flightsim, so those of us running ActiveSky can make our flight plans outside and load the textures easily without having to stop and restart the sim. The other minor thing about FSbuild for me was the learning curve. It does take some time to setup and get running, especially if you are like me and bypass the manual and just try to figure things out on your own.


-------------------------

Craig from KBUF

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FSBuild is awesome! My fav Flight planner!Manny


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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Yeah Speedbyrd, I had to jump in here with my own quick review... I purchased FSBuild a little less than two weeks ago, and I love it! It IS a complicated program; it takes some time to learn how to use it effectively, but for many of us simmers, that's half the fun!I use it in conjunction with a little program called Gatekeeper, available here at AVSIM (it gives you the option of assigning parking to your flight plan).Get FSBuild; I don't know anything about Ernie ending support for this fine program. I know he offers NavData updates on the FSBuild site; it's up to date for this month.

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I've been reading the manual and it looks like a lot of bang for the buck. Couple of things I'm stuck on is how to to use the NATS and PACOTS while inserting your own waypoints. I can insert the NAT but I'm not clear how to insert the points to meet up with it and the points to follow it. Also not sure how you edit aircraft info as I can't seem to get the VR speeds, they're always greyed out. I'll read up and tinker with it because I do like it and it does offer quite a few features for a reasonable price.

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I still use the old freeware 1.4.3 version. Does everything I need, but no bells or whistles like ver 2.scott s..

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I bought FSBuild about 4 weeks ago and have used it maybe 4 times. The SID/STARS were so close to what FSNavigator was already giving me with just the push of one button, I just went back to using FSNav exclusively for now. It was just simpler that way, but I'm keeping FSBuild in my hangar because I do anticipate using it more in the future.

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It's interesting how you plot a flight plan in FSBuild. You find your navaids by searching a particular area (assuming you want to be realistic and not use the 'auto generate' feature.) I don't think real life plans are 'auto generated' so I get my plans off 'Flightaware' which gives real world recent plans used by actual flights. It takes longer to plot in FS Build but I like the ability to import winds aloft info to more accurately gauge your fuel requirements.

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Guest pbn

You know, you can copy the flightplan text from flightaware and put it in the fsbuild, the only thing you need to do is fill in dest and dep airport code.FSBuild understands the format used on Flightaware and will plot the route if you paste it in the blue flightplan field, the same goes for some other webplannners as well.

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really?? that's certainly valuable to know and is a big plus in FSBuild's favor. Thanks, I'll try that.

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Guest pbn

One thing You should be aware of, is if FSBUILD doesn't recognize all of the flightplan it will just use direct between the parts it understands - no warning. It doesn't happen that often, but the FSBuild DB isn't perfect, this means you should allways check the route in any case.just a warning..

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Keep the FSB database up-to-date with the free download from fsbuild.com. Upper left of the home page cycle 0805 is available.If you use an FMC type aircraft and its SID/STAR database is not of the same currency then just export the plan including the SID/STAR if you wish to FS and your FMC and then load the plan into your FMC as a company route if you have that capability.Occasionally you'll have to renumber the SID or STAR when pasting into the FSB route window from flight aware to match the FSB database. You can always use the SID or STAR dropdown in the departure or destination sections just to see the procedure versions available to FSB.

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Hey, this works pretty well. Just pulled a flight off Flighaware from KBOS-KMIA, pasted into FSB and voila! generated a very nice route! I'll try it on a trans-ocean flight to see how it handles that.I don't always use SIDS/STARS because you can't be sure with wind conditions which direction you will be vectored, so I just do a point about 40 mi in the general direction I'm headed and go from there.

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>I don't always use SIDS/STARS because you can't be sure with>wind conditions which direction you will be vectored, so I>just do a point about 40 mi in the general direction I'm>headed and go from there.I always do my planning at the gate after listening to ATIS on the default FS9 ATC. I then plug the active into FSNav and export to Radar Contact. If there's more than one active, I just pick the one closest to my gate or request the one in my plan from RC, I'd say that works for me about 97% of the time.May not be real life, but for me it'll do for now.

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