hi allI hope this is right forum for this type of question. In FSX i fly piper cheyenne (2

Thats just the way it is in FSX. of course the other isue, could you imagine how much work would go into designing every aiport in the world with sids and stars and the software behind it to get ATC to actulayy vector you to the right one. It does its job, not realistically, but as yet, except for a few ATC replacemnet programs, i dont think there are any that actually work with the FSX atc, which would be nice.

Thats just the way it is in FSX. of course the other isue, could you imagine how much work would go into designing every aiport in the world with sids and stars and the software behind it to get ATC to actulayy vector you to the right one. It does its job, not realistically, but as yet, except for a few ATC replacemnet programs, i dont think there are any that actually work with the FSX atc, which would be nice.

For this reason Radar Contact was invented!

If you open the GPS, and take a look at your flight route (make sure you have all the icons showing on the display), you'll probably notice that you cross a lot of lines on the map, and possibly even fly along one, crossing back and forth to either side of it repeatedly as it winds along in a crooked way.What you will be doing, is repeatedly crossing a border or ATC zone and changing from one set of airspace to another and into different flight information regions. The different ATC centres that control air traffic in these various sections will want to talk to any aircraft in that airspace. Since that will be the responsibility of several different Air Traffic Control Centres, and you may even cross the ILS approach feathers (the green extensions from runways) of one or two airports, which will put you in the extended control zones of that airport, you'll get bounced around on the radio from one controller to another. So when you fly a route like that, you will obviously get a lot of hand-offs to different controllers. The time to worry would be if you flew right across an airport's runway approach path and ATC id not want to talk to you!!It will certainly happen a lot when flying from LJLJ to LOWI, since you are crossing European borders and mountainous terrain. It is not a fault on the part of FS, if you flew like that for real you would get that kind of thing going on. So what you need to do is create a route which does not cross such lines as much, and then you'll get more sensible ATC. Having that happen in FS is often seen as a fault in FS, but it is not, it's down to making a more sensible flight plan, which you can do by opening the FS flight planner and adjusting the route with all the icons on the flight planner map displaying, so that you can see if you are going to have that kind of problem.You will also notice that with the GPS in FS, you can choose various approaches for airports, and if you do choose them, you will get ATC vectoring you for those approaches. Lots of people think the ATC in FS is rubbish and will tell you 'oh get Radar Contact or Pro Flight Emulator' or whatever, but it is not as bad as a lot of people would have you believe, they simply do not know how to use FS properly and that's why they have problems. Programs such as Radar Contact and PFE do add a lot of things and are certainly worth getting hold of if you are looking for those kinds of features, but they are not a solution to a lack of understanding about how to plan a flight properly. I would recommend looking in the FS lessons for info on the GPS and flight planner; it is a lot more sophisticated than people generally think it is, but it is worth bearing in mind that it essentially uses the typical US procedures, and that can mean it is not always ideally suited to European flights.The reason you need charts in paper form (in the real world), is because your radio might go unserviceable and you might have poor visibility, your GPS might fail too (sometimes the signals are switched off in the real world, for example when the military are conducting exercise in a particular area, but not in FS, so you don't have to worry about that one!). In those circumstances, your only means of staying safe and landing safely would be those charts.If you are under radar control, you will always get vectors in areas where there is radar coverage (pretty much all of European airspace). You can fly VFR in these areas too if you follow the rules which relate to it, but if you file an IFR flight plan, then you are effectively saying: 'I want ATC to know what I am going to do and I want their assistance', so you will get it, but if you fly using the charts, it will be sort of like a 'team effort', with you doing some of the work and ATC monitoring you to make sure you are doing everything expected of you.Most of the time in the real world, it is more obvious what ATC will want you to do for any particular weather condition, so you can phone up an airport and say 'I'll be arriving in two hours, what will be the approach?' and they can tell you to use a particular arrival on your plan, but in FS you can't do that, so you have to base your decisions on weather forecasts and such, and again, you can do that with the FS flight planner and the weather controls in FS.As with everything else in life, reading up about it will go a long way to help, and in FS there is a lot of useful stuff to read in the lessons and knowledge base.Al