Hi,A question to help me understand basic ASA design concepts - does ASA know where I am flying with me actually telling it via a flight plan? Therefore if I just start up ASA, then FSX, then fly, will the weather be the real world weather for my starting point?

ASA knows exactly where you are but it has no clue where you actually want to go. If you import a flight plan then it can optimise the weather experience for your route and make it the best it can within the bounds of the flight simulator that you are using. Without a flight plan you may find things are perfectly fine in most cases but it some instances there may be odd stations on the route that have outdated data or non at all causing odd weather patterns, having a flight plan imported in these situations reduces the likelihood of that happening.

That makes sense - thank you.