I know of only one product that will give my my avg cruise head/tail wind for fuel planning, and that is Aerosoft's Flight Keeper. REX won't do it, neither does Dispatch X. Knowing whether I am going to be facing a tailwind or a headwind is pretty important for fuel planning. Yes, I could look at the flags on charts online and eventually calculate it myself, but would rather not, and besides, I'm not sure FSX wx programs are that accurate anyway. What do other people do? I don't want another flight planner, as I have learned to use FSX native one pretty well, or otherwise use en route charts. (Maybe I am in my minimalist phase.)

FSBuild with ASX/ASA weather data integrated can calculate avg. winds and fuel burn.Cheers,Pat

I just guess, and if I am wrong, I chicken out and enable unlimited fuel. The next time I go that route, I have a better guess in mind. If I can't guess (i.e. the aircraft is too exotic), and yet for whatever reason I refuse to use unlimited fuel, I will plot the basic course and let the autopilot run at full time compression (or hand fly at full TC). I don't bother landing. Then I look at the difference from the fuel at the beginning and the fuel at the end. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

So far I have been looking at the charts and just making a rough average. I never warmed to FS Build. I suppose I could try it again.

So far I have been looking at the charts and just making a rough average. I never warmed to FS Build. I suppose I could try it again.

Me neither. I am very finicky when it comes to software usability so I stop using a lot of products quickly.

I'm not sure FSX wx programs are that accurate anyway

Neither are the real world weather reports, that is part of the fun of it. You plan as best you can but if you don't have enough fuel then you have to do something about it.For airliners I basically just fill-her-up (everything else I liked doing by the book, jsut not fuel planning) but I don't fly them much any more. The fuel planning for that kind of role was just too tedious for me. For GA aircraft I do real fuel planning and that is _very_ simple.

So far I have been looking at the charts and just making a rough average. I never warmed to FS Build. I suppose I could try it again.

Assuming you are using real world weather, use a real world flight planner, FlightAware is one, I use AOPA usually :(