I want to fly real flight routes from flightaware.com. Yesterday I flew KJFK-KTPA from the websites route, but FSX doesn't show that route so I constantly get ATC telling me to turn a certain heading or different altitudes than what my SID or STAR chart states. Is there anyway to use FSX ATC in a real life manner so I can still do all the radio calls etc? Or do I have to use VATSIM since ATC follows my filed plan?

FSX Flight Plans can be modified to include all waypoints that are posted in flightaware.com flightplans. FSX ATC will then direct you to those waypoint. It doesn't work great all of the time but the best you can do. Look in the FSX Learning Center and look at how to edit a FSX flightplan. I have FS Build and it makes a flight plan for my PMDG 737 NGX FMC and it makes a duplicate flight plan for FSX. The biggest problem I have with that is the fact the FSX flight plan does not include a Gate so my aircraft is positioned at the active runway when I start up. I think I can make a fsx flightplan putting me at a Gate then open up that fsx flightplan and copy the Gate info and paste it in the FSX flightplan that FS Build made. That's very tedious and complicated though. Maybe there's another solution I have never heard about with out flightplan programs.

 

Best regards,

Jim

^{Yes there is. What you do is create a flight plan in FS, then edit it to include your SID and STAR. You can do this providing you know where the waypoints are for your procedure (usually a specific heading and distance from a beacon), but in actuality, a rough guess will be good enough to allow FS ATC to let you get away with flying the SID or STAR. Stuff such as Aivlasoft's EFB will do this for you, but you can do it manually, like this...}

 

^{Look at these screenshots, what you can see is an edited flight plan track with custom waypoints that I have added by simply clicking on the flight plan path line and dragging it to where I want it to go, which will create a custom waypoint on your plan. I have done that to match the waypoints for a Honiley 1 Romeo departure off 23R at Manchester on this plan in FSX, and sure enough, it is then on the GPS and the Navigation log in FSX, so ATC will get you to fly that plan.}

 

 

 

^Al

Can I put altitude restrictions like the SID and STARS too? I'll have to look into how to edit the flight plan in FSX because I was in the page showing waypoints and the "edit" key was shaded so I couldn't click on it.

Not sure if you can get that sophisticated with the FSX planner, but, it is a lot more capable than most people think. Just create the plan and then when you view it, drag the line about and that'll give you new waypoints.

 

Al

he biggest problem I have with that is the fact the FSX flight plan does not include a Gate so my aircraft is positioned at the active runway when I start up

 

Hello

FScommander will let you choose your starting gate and will also accept a flight plan pasted in from flightaware.com