Yeah, but what else are you doing in the descent that's keeping you so busy? Watching the AP? I didn't say arrival, I said approach. There are several full minutes of time to set all that up on the way down, and it shouldn't take more than a few seconds, especially in the States, where you can kill time in cruise looking at the various approaches if you're really not that familiar with the destination. Either way, if you do it right before T/D, it's better than trying to stab it in there before departure. Just don't expect ATC to give it to you until you're with approach (which for most here isn't an issue).

I am not disagreeing or complaining. After all it is no more than added realism. All i was pointing out is that for me personally it is going to take time before i can really get the hang of FMS input and editing so that i can handle that task with some amount of speed and handle any further ATC instructions that may come down the pipe at the same time. I also have watched many videos at just about all stages of flight and from what i can see, when they say pilot flying they meen what they say because from what i have observed, that's about all the PF does.Regards,

Some newbie questions here: how do you know which STAR to pick? Charts? And when you are descending and know which runway you have to land on, then what? Do you always get vectored to it? Or do you have to pick another STAR? Or another transition? Or...?

A humble advise to Jeroen:Spent some time with IVAO/at the IVAO site.I learned a lot about these things. Also from the ATC point of view.Grz.Paul

It seems to me that a newcomer "Electronic Flight Bag" (AivlaSoft) could be a good flight planner for the 737NGX. I understood that the program has been received very well. Does anyone has experience?Regards,Edward

I always use it as I find it very handy, especially for choosing SIDs and STARs, as it visualises your options while at the same time giving you other useful info like radio frequencies, nearby VORs, DMEs etc. At least for me it's much easier than having to pay for Navigraph charts which change quite frequently. Of course EFBs charts are not that detailed but give me a fairly good amount of information for the kind of simming I look for.I'd like to mention though that EFB cannot create routes; however you have the option of importing one from vroute or route finder or paste the route string as a text (I use FSC9 for this).For me the combination of FSC9 and Aivla's EFB, backed by ASE for the weather, has been working great and has never created any issues.Of course these refer to lateral navigation. For fuel planning and vertical navigation I trust my FMC (EFB works as a reference only for my approach profile)! I just load the coroute, enter expected SID and STAR, go to PROG page and check the fuel at destination and remove (or add) fuel accordingly so that you have some more fuel than the minimum required. No complicated maths, no frustration. I'm sure PMDG have programmed the FMC much better than I will ever do in an excel spreadsheet!As for the SID/STAR loading issue IMO it is very logical not to be included in the coroute as many of them (at least in Greece where I fly) depend on the runway, which in turn depends on the weather, therefore making it impossible to have the same flight everytime and using real time ASE weather...My two Eurocents

I am using Aivlasoft EFBhttp://www.aivlasoft.com/products/index.html

I always use it as I find it very handy, especially for choosing SIDs and STARs, as it visualises your options while at the same time giving you other useful info like radio frequencies, nearby VORs, DMEs etc. At least for me it's much easier than having to pay for Navigraph charts which change quite frequently. Of course EFBs charts are not that detailed but give me a fairly good amount of information for the kind of simming I look for.I'd like to mention though that EFB cannot create routes; however you have the option of importing one from vroute or route finder or paste the route string as a text (I use FSC9 for this).For me the combination of FSC9 and Aivla's EFB, backed by ASE for the weather, has been working great and has never created any issues.Of course these refer to lateral navigation. For fuel planning and vertical navigation I trust my FMC (EFB works as a reference only for my approach profile)! I just load the coroute, enter expected SID and STAR, go to PROG page and check the fuel at destination and remove (or add) fuel accordingly so that you have some more fuel than the minimum required. No complicated maths, no frustration. I'm sure PMDG have programmed the FMC much better than I will ever do in an excel spreadsheet!As for the SID/STAR loading issue IMO it is very logical not to be included in the coroute as many of them (at least in Greece where I fly) depend on the runway, which in turn depends on the weather, therefore making it impossible to have the same flight everytime and using real time ASE weather...My two Eurocents

Thank you George for sharing you experience. You said EFB cannot create routes. I don't understand you here because yesterday I used EFB for the first time and was able to create, edit and save a route for the 800NGX very well. It also has a route finder. By the way, I use v.1.3.1 SP5. So in my opinion EFB can cope very well with e.g. FlightSim Commander or FSBuild in terms of flight planning, and besides that it offers far more.Regards, Edward

Thank you George for sharing you experience. You said EFB cannot create routes. I don't understand you here because yesterday I used EFB for the first time and was able to create, edit and save a route for the 800NGX very well. It also has a route finder. By the way, I use v.1.3.1 SP5. So in my opinion EFB can cope very well with e.g. FlightSim Commander or FSBuild in terms of flight planning, and besides that it offers far more.Regards, Edward

Actually I meant that you cannot just enter departure and destination airports (like in FSC) and have an auto-generated route (I personally do not care much if a route is real or fictional as long as it's not something totally weird). As I said vroute and route finder do a great job, however I find route editing in EFB a bit difficult and I prefer to see and sometimes edit my route "on the map", which FSC does pretty easily.I have both but if I had to pick kust one I'd buy EFB as it does much more than FSC.On a second thought I'd rather wait to see pfpx as, according to what they say in their website, it'll pretty much do what both FSC and EFB do and also some more (fuel planning, take-off and landing derate calcs etc)... Hopefully they'll have a trial period like Aivlasoft does so that we can check it out...

Hi,Anyone know of any good flight planners that work well with the FMC on the PMDG 737NGX?Garry

I haven't had any problems with Flight Sim Commander. You can also preview all departure and arrival/approach procedures in there so you'll know what to select in the NGX FMC.

Yes you could do it in that way.But you have both "Alt Restriction" and "No Alt Restriction" to choose from when flying your SID.The diffr. is that the 1 one tells you to go to a certain Altitude which could be lower or higher than you imitial in your plan.When flying a STAR you should choose IAP, not Visual, when he wanna vector you.Choosing Visual is what it says....no IFR and no STAR, but since RC shuts up you could fly your STAR anyway./ Leffe

Most of the SID's have some sort of altitude restriction which is why I usually pick the 'Alt Restriction' option. I understand that with 'No Alt Restriction' selected, RC will assign altitudes that don't comply with the SID.You're right about the IFR option, but because RC doesn't assign a STAR to go along with the runway assignment, I just want it to shutup so either option will suit my purpose :)

Absolutely wrong.My FSC9 works like a charm and I can export all SIDs, STARS, Transitions and waypoints and they work great within the co route section. Perfectly I would say.I only have to to add the runway and clear discontinuities if they exist but beside that FSC9 works great indeed.

You are right. If you are looking into the resulting flight plans you'll find just a list of waypoints instead of airways, SIDs and STARs. The drawback is, that you would have to tackle all the necessary changes manually if there is the need to use a different runway than previously planned.