beginner's (mostly) add-on questions

[marce155 0]

Hello everyone!
I am so glad that my five day wait period is finally over :lol:

 

I had a lot of fun with FSX a few years ago, even got myself the NGX when it released. However, soon after I had a lot of work to do, started studies etc. and flying slowly drifted out of my attention.

 

Now I’m back and decided to go really serious this time. So starting with nothing but the fine NGX this is the selection of add-ons I gifted to myself so fair (I had some reason to celebrate, so yes it is a bit much at once):

• PMDG 737 NGX base pack
• PMDG 777 200LR/F
• Majestic Dash 8
• Active Sky Next
• REX Direct
• FS Global FTX Edition
• FTX Global
• FTX Vector
• PFPX (without TOPCAT)
• EFB
• EZDok
• FS2Crew 737 NGX Pack

I tried my very best to work through reviews, forum posts and manuals to find a good combination of add-ons which are able to work together. I hope I did somehow well so far since my (imho enthusiastic) starter budget is veeery stretched already as you might imagine ^_^

 

Well, I ran into some problems I wasn’t able to figure out myself. If it has been answered already and my search didn’t turn up the answer I do apologize in advance.

1. What is the reason for entering a flight plan in Active Sky Next? I thought it would simply spit out the real weather around the globe anyway?
2. Should I hook up PFPX with ASN or its default weather service?
3. Is it somehow possible to see weather beside the winds on the PFPX map (like storms I’d like to put an offset around or something like that)?
4. I tried to add a STAR to EFB en route, but it never picked up the aircraft when it entered the STAR (yes I activated the route). What did I do wrong?
5. PFPX often crashes randomly without an error message (“… has stopped working, Windows is looking for a solution…”). Tried Win7 comp mode and ran as admin, no help. Ideas?
6. I don’t really understand how to feed the wind estimates PFPX spits out into the NGX FMC. Example: what does FL150 290/018 -7 mean (the “-7” part)? And how do I convert something like this: “TL005 KT” into an avg wind I can feed into the FMC (I saw a thread about different notations and templates but with no definite solution and I got a bit lost tbh)?
7. Sometimes a transition is not available in the FMC, what can I do? Use a direct? Can I enter navpoints manually? How do I do that without overriding something else, like how do I insert a new “empty” leg?
8. What do you suggest to create some AI traffic? I don’t care too much about real world flight plans, so that would be just a bonus. What I want to see are flights of real world airlines all around the globe. And not a too heavy cps impact of course ;)
9. The last add-on I consider is some ATC since I’m far off flying online, that will take some months of training at least. I read a lot about this topic already, but found many different opinions, sometimes inconsistent feature descriptions etc. Whatever gets recommended it has to handle: AI traffic (see previous question), SIDs and STARs, update the weather data constantly and react appropriately. If I can’t talk to it that’s ok, though voice recognition is preferred to help me train myself. I don’t care too much about robotic sound if it works decently. If what I described is not available please tell me and I’ll simply continue without ATC for the foreseeable future.

I would be really, really grateful if someone could help me out with these problems!

Since I suppose it’s important here is my system:

• FSX only
• i5-3570k @ 4.2GHz
• 16GB RAM
• ASUS HD7950-DC2T-3GD5-V2 3GB
• Everything I mentioned is on on SSDs
• Resolution is 2560x1600
• EFB Display Unit on my tablet, everything else is running on the FSX machine
• Updates everything to Navigraph airac 1407
• Remark: I don’t use additional add-on scenery because I prefer a much inferior but mostly consistent appearance.
• Remark2: currently only using the 737 to fresh up my very rusty skills in a not fully unknown territory

Thanks in advance for your help to get me on track!

 

Best,

Markus

[Vargveum 53]

Excellent inventory list there. ;) 

 

1. Nah.. Haven't used the flight plan a single time.

 

2. I use the "default" PFPX weather with ASN. Not much difference I think. But experiment with it! You can't break anything. 

 

3. Nope.

 

4. No clue about EFB.

 

5. .................. Do not know, sorry.

 

6.    -7 is the temperature at FL150 (in C).

       

       On the 737 CDU PERF INIT page: enter top of climb (TOC) wind from PFPX.

 

       On the LEGS page, go to RTE DATA: Enter wind for each waypoint.

 

7. Not sure what you mean here, but if the magenta line doesn't take you straight to the rwy threshold, you have to self-vector: Fly the plane! Either manually or by HDG select.     

 

8. Ultimate Traffic 2

 

9. I fly on Vatsim almost exclusively.

 

:) This was really fast, but feel free to ask more.

[marce155 0]

Glad to hear I chose the right stuff so far :lol:

 

So I should ignore the “AVG WIND CMP” value PFPX gives me completely?

 

In the meanwhile I accidentally ran into a video where Froogle works around an unplanned missing transition, understood what to do in such a case… I think  :huh:

 

Will have a look at Ultimate Traffic and thank you very much for your response!

 

Best,
Markus

[Vargveum 53]

LOL. You sure picked the right apples. 

 

Yeah, I use avg wind component as nice little piece of info. If you like the FMC to show as exact ETA as possible, you have to input the different wind/velocity values at each waypoint in your flight plan. That can take a while if it is a long flight. I hardly ever do that to be honest.

 

The PFPX flight plan will still give you the correct leg times, time of arrival, fuel consumption etc. 

[marce155 0]

Thanks, got it!