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Zoombag

VFR/IFR flight planning

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Hi all,

 

I apologise if this question has been answered, I have done a search but have found nothing.

 

From my experience of flight planning (real world), both VFR and IFR, cruising level winds play a big role in calculating HDG, Drift, GS, ETI and Fuel Used.

 

How does one get accuracte weather in FSX to calculate the above for a flight plan? Besides the obvious of user entered/generated weather.

 

Any help would be much appreciated

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There are several programs...REX, Active Sky Next (recommended), FEX. FSrealWx Pro, FXWX.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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There are several programs...REX, Active Sky Next (recommended), FEX. FSrealWx Pro, FXWX.

Agreed, ASN weather engine is great. Open SP3 beta right now, too.

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Thanks for the information I'll have a look into them .. But a quick question, can they generate met packages so when I'm planning a flight I can print off the ARFORs/wind charts/TAFs to plan my navlog and airfield suitability? or do they only generate the weather into FSX

 

Thanks again

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But a quick question, can they generate met packages so when I'm planning a flight I can print off the ARFORs/wind charts/TAFs to plan my navlog and airfield suitability? or do they only generate the weather into FSX

 

From the software suggested above, I own REX and ASN and they does not generate these met packages.

 

But, since you are looking for some tool to help you with practising real world flights in FSX, you can checkout http://vfrflight.org.

 

I have PPL and I am trying to make a perfect tool for VFR flights (real world and trainings in sims).

 

It has an option to add METAR and TAF to your PDF generated flight plan (but only the current ones).

 

Incoming update will bring a feature to import airspace data.


Lukasz Kulasek

i7-8700k, RTX 2080 TI, 32 GB RAM, ASUS TUF Z370-PRO Gaming, Oculus Rift CV1

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Since ASN uses real world weather, you simply need to just look up the weather in that area and that's what it will be. However, within ASN it does give you a flight briefing once you have loaded your route, and you can search through stations to give you the weather output.

 

However, if you mix ASN with PFPX your printed flight plan will include the weather, so it will give some or most of what you want, including the wind charts

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Depends where you're flying and what sort of flight you're doing!

 

The US NOAA provides World Area Forecast Centre wind & temperature charts for the entire world at various levels: http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/wafswind.shtml (though the charts cover areas the size of continents, so whilst the detail is fine for long-ish range flights, you may find it insufficient for shorter VFR trips). There is also www.aviationweather.gov which provides detail for the US.

 

If you're flying VFR in the UK, it's worth signing up (free) to the Met Office aviation briefing service - https://secure.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/index.jsp - which gives low-level spot wind and significant weather charts for the UK and Europe, amongst other bits and pieces.

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Thanks for the information I'll have a look into them .. But a quick question, can they generate met packages so when I'm planning a flight I can print off the ARFORs/wind charts/TAFs to plan my navlog and airfield suitability? or do they only generate the weather into FSX

 

Have you looked at Skyvector.com ?  That's what I use for all of my planning.  On the right side on the bar there's a 'Layers' button that you can click to get winds aloft at various altitudes.  If you hover your mouse over a dot on the map you get the latest weather report.  You can also add radar and satelite.  But, you'll need an app that generates that weather (from one of the ones I listed above) to have that weather in your sim. 


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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Thanks again everyone for the replies.

 

I shouldve specified what I plan on doing. I will be flying in Australia doing small twin IFR/VFR flights (DA42) and GA VFR flights (C172).

 

When practicing planning I use the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) which provides everything I need. However I was looking for some consistency with FSX, as in I didnt want to print of met from the BoM and that not be the weather in FSX. ASN seems to be the way to go as mentioned above it provides me a flight briefing.

 

But with ASN providing real world weather, can I use any website to gather met? where does ASN source their weather form (NOAA, BoM, etc)?

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Yes you can do that, however I can't answer where it gets it from. But, everything in Europe I've had is bang on the mark of real. So yes, you can do that

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Yes you can do that, however I can't answer where it gets it from. But, everything in Europe I've had is bang on the mark of real. So yes, you can do that

 

Thank you for your help

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I should also mention, with ASN you can bring up a menu in-flight and request weather fro departing, arriving airports, but also the closest weather station to your current position, so in-flight.

 

I don't personally use it while in-flight because it kills the realism a bit for me, but I guess it would only be the same as finding your closest airport and tuning in to ATIS. As I said you can use ASN to check the weather from outside the sim in the app itself. Maybe loading a route wouldn't apply so much to VFR, but in IFR you import the route and then it gives you a whole briefing page for your route. I guess you can do that for VFR, unless you're just making it up you're going to follow some route or another, even if it's not exact. There is other advantages to importing the route however.

 

But you could just scrap all that, load up ASN, then use whatever weather information you wanted. As with all weather, it depends on it's source. You can find two cities have slightly different temperature for a day if it's from two different sources. But you're going to be pretty close. It's just if you use the ASN weather information, you know exactly what you will have in the sim, I can't see it different that much that it would matter.

 

I had a rather embarrassing moment when I first bought ASN, since I wasn't sure if it was working or not. So I looked outside and then looked in the sim (I was in South east London so loaded up London City) and noted the clouds where quite different and though it wasn't working, but the temperature was correct and I had the ASN menus. Then realised that no, ASN does not exactly copy the clouds and that maybe expecting the exact type and amount of clouds was a little too much for a £20 application :)

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