I'm flying the Baron 58, and I'm learning on the GPS. Suppose you've activated an approach in keeping with your flight plan. But when you contact the tower at your destination airport, they assign you a different runway. I read here where you can request a different transition. How do you do that? Also, how many of you fly GPS until you get to your approach, and then switch to a VOR or ILS landing? How do you do that, too? It can get complex, but I'm sure someone has an answer for me.

Good question, I too have a similar one.I understand it is possible to change from a VFR flight to IFR, and this option is on the ATC menu.However, this brings up the flight planner page, and I assume it will start me from the departure airport, as opposed to just kicking in IFR flight details from where ever I am.Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.Tim

You don't want to Activate the approach until you're formally cleared for it by ATC. (The key thing to listen for is something about how far you are from the destination.) Just *Load* it. Later, if you get something unexpected, you can clear the approach from your flight plan and choose another. You Activate the approach when you're cleared to the Initial Approach Fix or have been vectored by ATC outside of and near the FAF (the latter case is what the "Vectors" option is for).re: requesting a different approach - you do this via the ATC dialog menu. Once ATC has told you what approach to expect, the ATC menu should have an entry that says "request different approach" or something like that. You can then select any other approach that FS9 knows about.re: GPS > LOC/ILS - yup, that's how it's typically done. By "law" you are required to use the LOC/glideslope radio signal for your guidance once you've passed the Final Approach Fix, but prior to that it's easiest to use the GPS rather than VOR radials. In the real Garmin GNS530 (and thus, also in the RealityXP 530XP add-on for FS9), the unit will auto-load the ILS/LOC nav frequency into the standby slot of the NAV radio, and then when you get within a certain distance/position from the FAF, the GNS's logic will switch you from GPS to LOC mode. If you neglect to switch the standby freq to the active one, the GNS will alert you of this with a message at some point (I forget exactly where, but soon enough so that you're not "caught out" witout the proper freq loaded into the active frequency slot of the GNS nav radio). I'm not sure if the FS9 "GPS500" does any of this though - I'd be surprised if it did. It doesn't work like the real unit in many ways.Regarding the first reply poster's question, and how the flight planner puts you at the originating point of your flight plan - the planner should give you a dialog box asking if you want it to re-position you to the originating point; if you say "no" then you'll be right where you were when the flight planner was invoked. Not terribly realistic, but at least we can "file IFR in the air" (a.k.a. get a "popup" IFR clearance), which you couldn't do in FS2002.Dave Blevins

>Good question, I too have a similar one.>>I understand it is possible to change from a VFR flight to>IFR, and this option is on the ATC menu.>>However, this brings up the flight planner page, and I assume>it will start me from the departure airport, as opposed to>just kicking in IFR flight details from where ever I am.>>Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.When you click Ok, just don't select the box that says "reposition aircraft to departure airport"._____________________________http://home.comcast.net/~jsnyder99/sigs/nameavsim.jpg

Ahhh......how cool!I'll try that tonite.Tks

Thanks, Dave, appreciate it. I'll try that. But are you saying I need the Reality XP 530XP add-on to be able to do that? I've only been using the default GPS500 that comes with fs9.

Sorry, I was a little unclear in my post. The GPS500 can be used for most of what I described - but I'd be surprised if it does the auto-loading of the nav frequency and the auto-switching from GPS to LOC that I mentioned.One other major shortcoming of the GPS500 that annoyed me when I played around with it (briefly) after getting FS9, which may never be a factor for you, is that it doesn't treat a Direct To destination and the loaded flight plan as two different things. So, if you're flying along on a complex flight plan and you decide to either skip part of the plan or try to temporarily load a Direct To destination, it will replace the entire flight plan with one that just has the Direct To destination in it.The real unit (and 530XP) lets you do a Direct To to something without blowing away your flight plan, and this also lets you skip intermediate points in the flight plan which is sometimes useful. (Also, you can edit the flight plan directly in the real thing/530XP - i.e. insert/replace/delete waypoints - whereas in FS9 you have to go back to the flight planner.) However, one thing the GPS500 does do that 530XP doesn't yet (not sure if it ever will) is load the flight plan that you created with FS9's flight planner. With 530XP, you have to enter the flight plan "again" manually - not a big deal but I sure wish it could import a plan directly.cheers,dB.