Hi All,I just bought Reality-XP's 530XP. Now I'm trying to figure out how to plan my flights to ustilize it.How do you plan your flights?Do you get a weather briefing before you start the simulator so you know which direction you will be taking off and landing, so you can plan which runways and which dep/arr procedures you will use?Do you use FS9 ATC at all, or just fly the route you have planned?What flight planners are you using.Info about anyone's procedures would be helpful.Thanks

I use www.fltplan.com Its a free service that has real FAA approved routes in the database. Its mainly for continental US only, but for outside the US I have heard Ernie Alston's FSBUILD is a great tool for Flight Planning.! :-)

Hi GhostCongratulations with your purchase! I enjoy mine, hope yours give you lots of joy.I fly with real weather, updated every 15 minutes. I seldomly fly IFR using the FS9 ATC, as their vectoring to the destination airport still needs a bit of tweaking.My flight planning is done as follows:1) I use real-world charts or memory to have all the waypoints between departure and destination.2) Yes, either ATC gives me the runway to take off from, or I use Shift-Z to see the actual winds.3) I sometimes use SIDs and STARs, but more often than not I just fly direct to the first waypoint when ATC tells me I am out of TOWER's airspace.4) Now to the GARMIN unit: Programming it is done normally with a few waypoints, and I have set up the second screen to show me enroute safe altitude in the top left box (just a double-check to verify my cruise level as sufficient for terrain clearance).Hope this helps.RegardsPaul

Thanks all for your suggestion. This looks like a great piece of equipment. Can't wait to get up and running with it.