All you experts may have figured out how to work with ATC but when I bought FS2004 a few months ago and I needed ATC to vector me to an ILS I was very disappointed with ATC vectoring me far away from the airport, telling me to ascent to a higher FL when I was descending to land, or just plain forgetting about me. The choice of runways to land on is limited and communication with ATC is slow and tedious. So now I just use the direct key on the GPS 500 to select an airport and then use the PROC key to select an ILS approach. The GPS map shows a purple straight line pointed straight to the ILS. Using the NAV/heading I manually fly the heavy about 7nm from the beginning purple line so the heavy has enough room to make a turn if needed. Switch to GPS/NAV and the heavy flies itself to the waypoint and lines itself up with the runway. Then select NAV/APP and catch the ILS. It's not perfect but I'm just glad I don't have to deal with ATC anymore. Any better/easier way to navigate without ATC?I installed FS2004 with the 9.1 patch on a brand new Toshiba P25-S676 3.4GHz PC with 1 gig RAM and nVIDIA 5700 128MB graphics card. Sometimes FS2004 crashes to the blue screen requiring a reboot. This only happens (rarely) when I cycle between views too quickly using the S key. So now when I press the S key I just wait 1-2 seconds for all the graphics to load before pressing the S key again. No more crashes.

Yeah, you could fly the plane yourself instead of watching it do everything for you? That's how I navigate ;-)

Many simmers are disappointed when using the canned ATC of FS2004 for various reasons. You can use your navigation radios in combination with the GPS like you're doing. However to make it more interesting actually create a flightplan, load it and then you can follow it using the GPS or allow the GPS to fly it.If you really want to use ATC I would suggest joining VATSIM (free) then go to their Pilot Resourse Center and learn how to fly online with real ATC. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

You may also find something taking off as you come in to land if you have no contact at all with ATC!

What heavies are you flying? Default? Freeware?I haven't even looked at the heavies in 2004, but a lot of times people in heavies go too fast into final and can't get the ATC tower fast enough for a runway to land. It depends on the airport, but the best way is to monitor the weather for the wind direction and pay attention to the ARTCC comms in the area for possible instructions for other traffic. I find that having an FMC that payware models have and Active Sky really helps. Active Sky makes the whole weather experience much better and gives arrival weather the whole trip. Also with the FMC, you can put in waypoints that might favor one area or another for possible runway prediction. If you predict one set of runways and it gives you another, you can just go into a quick hold while you program the FMC the way you want or just fly manually to the runway they give you. Most of the time I'm correct in my prediction and I always plan ahead in case I'm not. You'd be surprised how easy it is without ATC IFR flight plans.

Unless you have traffic turned down, you could get into AI conflicts. If you know what the active runway is, then you could ask for a specific procedure (I think, having not used FS9 ATC for along time but that was described as a feature) and then follow a plate or use your FMC/GPS to fly the approach.I would highly suggest having an appropriate TCAS display in your panel to help maintain seperation.