Yesterday I tried a couple of flights over the Swiss Alps. I was flying from Lapaz to Italy. I also tried another similer route. I use Flight Planner in FSX because I like the Air Traffic Control and I have AS2012. On both routes I got to the second or third waypoint and it came up as a Discontinuity. No matter how far forward I went it was the same. I fly the NGX all the time but usually in the US. Iooked at the Magnetic Variation updates and from what I see they are mostly talking about runway position which I do not have issue with. I hate downloading anything I do not need. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ron

You do realize that following FSX ATC will compromise some of the realistic features of the B737, right? Can you not just close the discontinuity by up-selecting the waypoint after it?

Hi Ron

Owen's reply will clear the dicontinuity. Go to the legs page on your CDU (FMC) use next page to sroll down, once you find a discontinuity it can be cleared by placing the next fix in it's place-ie click on the next fix, this may be on next page then go back to the dicontinuity & click the left button where the 0000 appear-this will put the fix you just selected into this spot & the dicontinuity will disappear. hope this helps.

The others have offered ways to fix the discontinuities (which are completely natural, depending on the route), but I want to reiterate what Owen said:

 

NGX - highly realistic

AS2012 - closer to realism than FSX at least

Flight Planner in FSX - very poor at creating routes

ATC in FSX - very, very, very unrealistic (quite frankly, it's terrible)

 

Combining realism with things that are not realistic will not get you the results you expect.

When I said " No matter how far forward" I meant that I was trying to use the next waypoint in the FMC. At one point I ended up with a 15,000 mile rt. I agree that FSX creates bad routes and the ATC is terrible but if there is any other route builder/Atc that will work in FSX I am all ears.

Thanks,

Ron

I still do not understand what you mean. Are you unable to close the discontinuities? If done properly, you should not lose any waypoints and end up with such a long leg. Perhaps you should post some screen shots of your cockpit and FMC.

 

I do not think that there are any other ATC–route planning combinations. There is FlightAware for real-world routes and RouteFinder for automatically generated routes. You can either input the waypoints from these routes into the FMC directly, or save a flight plan through inputting the waypoints into SimRoutes. All of these can be found online. There are also comprehensive payware programs such as FSBuild, although I do not have any experience with them.

I agree that FSX creates bad routes and the ATC is terrible but if there is any other route builder/Atc that will work in FSX I am all ears.

 

For the record, I only mentioned that because you're trying to fly a realistic plane, realistically, in unrealistic environs.

 

I have a feeling you're not entering the route properly, or are trying to import the FSX route into your FMC. Even if you're not, if you would please post your exact process, it would probably help you troubleshoot a lot more effectively.

 

For what it's worth, you can go to www.simroutes.com for route pairings. Some of them are old, but they're still much better than the FSX trash. Here in the States, my recommendation is FlightAware.

 

...and you're never going to get Flight Sim to agree with you when it comes to SID/STARs. To me, it's online or nothing.

Owen and Kyle:

I appreciate your help. I am entering the next waypoint into the scrathpad and I tried to copy it to both sides of the FMC to no avail. I think what may be happening here is more along the lines of what Kyle is saying. I am flying in Sweden trying to use FSX routes and I think I just ran into a couple of bad ones. I was really hoping (as I am sure we all were) that Flight was going to evolve with ATC and a global eviorment etc. I do not have time to get involved flying online so I mess around here.

Thanks again.

Ron

Ron,

You can always run the inverse. Create a route with a new planner, or even SimRoutes, download the plan, and then load it into the FSX flight planner. That'll allow you to use the routes your NGX has in its database, while still using FSX ATC.

Ron - As suggested I think some screenshots may help us 'resolve' your waypoint entry issues. Or perhaps you could post up the route that you are trying to use.

Jason & Kyle: The routes were Munich to Malpensa and Stuggart to Malpensa.

 

Kyle: If i am undersanding you correctly, I could go to Sim Routes, Download a route and just put it in my flights folder that is in my documents. I should be able to fly it from there as a saved flight or get to it from the flight planner. Correct?

Thanks,

Ron

(That would be Kool)

Ron,

 

That's correct. That's what I do in order to get the route into ActiveSky's Flight Plan briefing...thing.

Upon checking the whole work flow, it seems the route search feature doesn't work very well for EU Airports - I used a route found off of vataware.com, and then used SimRoutes to generate a file. My normal flow is to steal the RW flight's route that was flown off of FlightAware, but I only trust that for flights around the States.

 

Go to whatever site you'd like to get your route (in my case, I used www.vataware.com - on the left side there's "Top Routes" - search for the city pair)

The resulting route for that was: KPT Y740 NATAG UY740 GIGGI UM984 LUSIL.

Copy that route and go to http://www.simroutes...ParseRoute.aspx

Add in the departure field (and if it has the appropriate SID, select it in the drop down - it's hit or miss, the guy does it for free)

Add in the route in the middle box

Add in the arrival field (and if it has the appropriate STAR, select it in the drop down - again, hit or miss)

Hit generate route

 

On the next page, you'll see a button for "Download Flightplan" over on the right side.

Change the sim version to FSX, click the button (aircraft type doesn't matter - it's used for the calcs on the page, and for filing on VATSIM if you want to)

 

Place the downloaded file in your Flight Sim folder within your My Documents folder.

 

Fire up FS, when you go to the Flight Planner, click Load, look for the file, load it...done!

 

Just for the sake of making sure everything works properly, I would avoid loading any plan files that you didn't create from the FMC itself.

Normally, when I fly, I'll hand enter the route into the FMC (takes 30 seconds - max) and then go back to page one of RTE page and save the route (before adding anything on in the SID/STAR page). Next time, I can just load the route, but to make sure there are no formatting errors, I avoid loading routes created by third party planners for use with the FMC. It won't mess anything up, it's just a thing with me...

Thanks for all the help Kyle. I looked at both of those sites and put them in my favorites. I always hand enter the plan. Any other way is cheating to me. Do you fly full scale? It looks by your picture that you might.

Have to go to work.

Thanks,

Ron

I wouldn't say that to use a saved route is cheating. In fact, many commercial pilots make use of the company route feature in the FMC. It not only saves time, but also ensures consistency. When you have to enter in lots of waypoints in a rather unfriendly user interface (that is, compared to seeing the route text on a computer), errors may occur. With the company route, the SIDs and STARs can then be selected depending on the nature of the flight on a particular day, allowing a certain amount of flexibility. You can even save these company routes from the FMC.

Thanks for all the help Kyle. I looked at both of those sites and put them in my favorites. I always hand enter the plan. Any other way is cheating to me. Do you fly full scale? It looks by your picture that you might.

 

You're welcome Ron. I do, but not for the airlines or anything. Right now, I like to call myself my friends' last-minute getaway option. My other pilot buddy took that on a flight last December.

 

As far as the saved routes, COROUTEs are actually a real feature, and do get used commercially as Owen mentioned above (and here):

I wouldn't say that to use a saved route is cheating. In fact, many commercial pilots make use of the company route feature in the FMC.

 

I just don't particularly like using saved routes from other programs, as their nav database may not match mine (I know for a fact that SimRoutes' doesn't). That's why I set it manually the first time, and then save it. From then on, for the same route, I'll COROUTE it.