Airway's Help ?

[Guest]

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[Vulcan 14]

It's a long time since I had FS2000 on my system :-) but I'll try to help, I assume you only have the default FS flight planner and map.When you create a flight plan in FS you can create it in 3 (I think) different ways.DirectLow level airwaysHigh level airwaysIf you select either of the last two your flight plan will follow either the low or high level airways.You can also display these airways on the map view.The airways are similar to motorways/freeways in that they keep aircraft flying along structured routes and are controllered by Air Traffic Controllers (ATC). The airways are mainly a safety device to stop aircraft wandering all over the sky and bumping into each other, they also help to make things a bit easier for ATC, and boy do they need all the help they can get :-)An airway then is a defined route from point A to point B and that route is marked with radio beacons (VORs) and directions from the VORs. Aircarft are equiped with radios that can tune into these VORs and show bearings from the VORs so that the aircraft can follow those bearings to stay on the airway.A simple theoretical example.An airway (A1) may be shown as starting at MCT VOR, leaving that VOR on 192 degrees and ending at HON VOR.To fly that airway the pilot would tune NAV1 into the frequency of MCT and on the NAV1 display set the course to 192 degrees. He would then turn the aircraft until the centre part of the display needle is in line with the outer part of the needle so that he is flying along the 192 degree radial from MCT.You mention flying with the FMC using waypoints, AFAIK only add-on a/c have FMCs so you may be asking how to program the FMC to use airways instead of waypoints. If that is the case please state which aircraft you are using.HTH

[Guest]

Hi, Many thanks for your reply, as for how to program the FMC with the use of airways instead of waypoints I have Flight1 737 and I have Justflight's 777-200 & 747-400 If you could help me with anyone of these's aircraft planning FMC With airway's would be great. Many thanks for your help ! Scott

[Vulcan 14]

Hi Scott,The 777/747 and 737 use different methods to enter the route into the FMC, details are given in their respective manuals.The 777/747 FMC can only accept waypoint entries in the legs page, the 737 can accept waypoints and airways in the route page.If you have access to airway idents then entering a route into the 737 FMC would be as follows, after you enter the departure and destination airports.On the route page the first entry would usually be the first w'pt of the airway so on the right of the page under 'To' we might enter MCT, then on the second line, LHS under 'VIA' we might enter A1, then on the same line on the RHS under 'To' we might enter HON. We continue this way until we reach our destination.This would tell the A/P to fly from MCT VOR along the airway A1 to HON VOR and so on.So entering a route in the 777/747 is easy, just create the route in the FS flight planner using IFR and high altitude airways and then enter the listed waypoints into the FMC. You can display the airways in map view by pressing the 'J' button.The 737 is not as easy to program a route due to limitations in the default FS planner. The 737 uses airway identifiers and FS only shows the airways not their indents so you reduced to entering only waypoints.There is another limitation in the default planner, the database cannot easily be updated to keep it current with real world w'pt and airway changes whereas the the FMC databases can. So you could end up with a situation where you enter a w'pt from the FS flight plan and the FMC will not accept it because its database does not have that w'pt.For this, and a number of other reasons, the more serious simmers use add-on flight planning programs. There are a number out there but perhaps the most popular is FSNav but it is payware.Most if not all these planners can have their databases updated to reflect real world changes just like the FMCs so they are always in step.I use FSNav which is full screen so you can see what you are doing, unlike the FS map view, it will show airways and their idents and all the w'pts and also acts as a moving map so you can see where you are. It can also drive the A/P of default a/c.So to sum up.If you only have the default flight planner you can only enter w'pts into the FMCs. You can however check that the planner has routed you via airways by pressing 'J' in map view and then checking your route line does follow the airways. If it doesn't you drag the route line to a w'pt that lines up on an airway.HTH