fsx/fsx-se? Several scenery / aircraft addon questions

[Voxelfox 0]

Hello Avsim-Community,

 

I am new to the forums and actually quite new to flight siming aswell. I have some questions regarding scenery addons and two specific addon planes.

 

I guess you get those kind of questions a lot but I wanted to hear specific answers on my questions, because all the research I did confuses me, because there are many many oppinions of course - in the end it'll still be up to me though I know

 

So a few months back I installed my FSX again after probably 3 years and really started to get interested into flight siming. I got the PMDG 737NGX for my birthday and quite liked the depth of it. I did both tutorials, but I am struggling to really learn more about the plane. That biggest hinderance for me is the flight planning, it seams to me that you have to get PFPX and Topcat to really plan your flights properly, those tools are expensive though, and I don't know if it's worth it. Aren't there other ways to plan your flight for free. I know of "rfinder" but that doesn't tell you certain things like takeoff data and so on.

 

To summarize my first "topic" so to say:

- How did you learn how to fly the PMDG 737NGX?
- How do you plan your flights properly? 

 

I also realized that I'd enjoy some GA aircrafts aswell (VFR flying), such as the A2A products: Cessna 172 or the new Cherokee 180. I really like there walk arround and "taking care" system.

So the first question is:

- Would you get the Cessna or the Cherokee from A2A?

 

Coming to my last question. I thought, I'd like a nice scenery to fly a GA aircraft in. I am thinking of a ORBX scenery. I just wanted to here your oppinion about the different regions they offer and which one you'd recommend the most for GA flying. I had an eye on the PNW scenery, but the Australian, New Zealand and also the Northern California scenery are looking very great! My only concern was that ORBX offers payware airports in those regions, so you'd have to spend even more money, or are the airports in the scenery packs modeled better non the less?

 

Okey enough text for now. I hope I posted that in the right section of the forum. Thank you for your help in advance.

 

Greetings,

Tim (Voxelfox)

 

 

[Aamir 2,907]

A PFPX-like freeware alternative is SimBrief.com

 

To answer a couple of your questions:

I learned to fly the 737 by reading the manuals twice over than going out and just.. Flying, I guess.. (Watching some frooglesim videos helped greatly too..)

 

And, I use PFPX for my flight-planning needs.

[ViperPilot 81]

Welcome to the Forums, Tim!

 

As Aamir said, there are several different Flight Planners available, from SimBrief to SimRoutes, FlightAware to SkyVector.

 

A lot of learning the Systems is to get the airplane up in the air, and start experimenting. The Manual may be tedious to read, but invaluable in order to familiarize yourself with the A/C's Systems.

 

YT or other Videos on Flight Planning and the PMDG airplanes are also invaluable.

 

As far as ORBX is concerned, it really depends on where you want to fly. The Payware Airport add ons add more eye candy than what the Default ORBX airports provide.

 

Either A2A offering is good, but again, it's based on what you desire to fly. If you thought the NGX was complicated, A2A is very similar; very Systems intensive.