in a commerical jet and having a flightplan with VORs and intersections, do i fly straight to the VORs and bypass the intersections as most are on a different radial than the upcoming VOR? or do i hit all the intersections on the way to the next VOR? if so, exactly when would i need to start tracking the VOR? at the last intersection before the VOR? confused? i am. william

after looking "CLOSELY" at my navlog under "route" it shows the jetway number which bypasses the intersections more or less and is pretty much VOR to VOR. i wonder how close choosing VOR to VOR would be to using a high altitude airway thus giving a route with no intersections showing in the plan. i'll check it out. william

If your flying airways you just follow the route between the VOR you just past and the one that is next on your route. If the route is not staight from one VOR to another, ie. one with an intersection, then you have to fly to the intersection before making the turn, unless of course ATC lets you cut the corner. BTW high alt charts also have intersections. Just do what we do,,, file direct. (This guarantees nothing of course)To answer the second part of your question about when to switch VOR's. That depends. Usually you switch at the midway point between the 2, however, sometimes for varying reasons the powers that be have us switch VOR's sooner or later than halfway, this will be depicted on the chart. Hope this clears things up.B Bjorkman PS, to answer the question as to whether I know what I'm talking about or not, I do this everyday at work in a Lear 31.

thanks for the info. on my navlog under the route section it has me flying J90 from JVL to MCW with 5 intersections between the two, all with different headings from one intersection to the next intersection. now what do you mean by flying direct? direct to the VOR and skip the intersections? also without using the GPS how are you going to track the intersections? i know how to do it but that is almost to much work and by the time you track an intersection, you've probably flown over it as they are so close together. backing up a bit, if i have 5 intersections before my next VOR, i start tracking the VOR after the last intersection? sorry for all the questions but these are what's on my mind now. thanks, william

I've got to make a 2 day trip to DC. When I get back I'll find this post and answer, short on time this am. B Bjorkman

btw, what is jvl and mcw so i can look it up. thanks

those are my first 2 VORs from midway KMDW to seattle KSEA. you could use the default flightplanner and use those 2 airports for departure and arrival and choose high altitude airways and you'll get the flightplan, IFR of course. anyway those 2 VORs are peppered with intersections. i just want the airways which i see under the route section. i guess the intersections under heading are there if i need them, huh? i'm assuming so. have a good trip and thanks. william

When I did the flight planner in the sim, it went from ORK to MCW with a turn at JIBOR intersection. This path crosses directly over JVL, but it wasn't in the flight plan. These routes are essencially VOR to VOR but some times there are intersections you must turn at. These interecections are denoted by an "X" on a Enroute Chart (Low and High Altitude both). As for when to switch frequencies, as Bjorkman stated, you change them halfway unless otherwise denoted on the map by a S shaped bracket on the airway with numbers at both ends of the bracket. The numbers represent the distance, in nautical miles, that that point is from the VORs.----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

Hi William,Just looked at J90 on my High Altitude charts (they are a couple years old). It shows J90 running from MCW to OBK, not JVL. I believe JVL is only used on some Victor routes. The routing from OBK on J90 is OBK radial 294 outbound to JIBOR intersection (102 mi), then the MCW radial 089 inbound. Intersections inbound to MCW are LARVA (123 mi),VIKNG (79 mi), and SUZYQ (51 mi). J90 continues on to RWF and points west.Hope this helps.

hey guys, thanks for droppin' in on this. i understand about the freq. changes, no problem there. i was using the fs9 default planner and now that i think of it i may have edited it so the way points may not match up with yours.how are you tracking the intersections, with the GPS? also, would you line up the course needle in the HSI to a heading that would put you on course to the next intersection as sort of a reminder. then when half way to the VOR or whenever, you'd switch to the next VOR freq. and start tracking it? thanks, again for your comments. william

In real life with the light planes I fly, I'd do it with Nav 1 and Nav 2. I'd use the GPS to track the whole flight in FS since you have it though. I haven't found a jet in FS that gives you anything other than the RMI to track Nav2 with anyway. Most of the interesections you'll see are mereley reporting points anyway, FS ATC doesn't have you report crossing them.----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

thanks for all the help guys! william

William Ok, I'm back for my trip to DC. I've read the posts written since I've been gone. You know I think you're making this harder than it really is. Let me try and explain how this works. I'll use the trip I just did this am for an example. Before I begin let me just say there are really only three ways we depart an airport when on an IFR flight plan. The three ways depend on the airport your leaving from. If your departing from an airport with a tower you get your clearance from clearance delivery or whoever the plate tells you to. If your leaving from a non towered field then you have to get a void time. This is done by calling clearance delivery or approach or whoever the plate tells you to prior to takeoff, on the phone or radio depending on the area. If you don't get a void time then you can pick up your clearance when airborn but you have to stay VFR until you do. (This is not an option at Leesburg because its in the ADIZ, Air defense Zone, You get shot down without a squawk code, I'm not kidding) Today we were at Leesburg Executive (kjyo) We started up and as we were taxying (how do you spell that???) we called clnc del and got a clearance with a void time (no tower). We told him we would be off in 30 seconds. He gave us our clearance. Now, we have and use a FMS (gps) which they knew because we told them when we filed our flight plan. BTW every jet large and small has these unless I suppose its really old and hasn't been updated which I can't imagine. Now, to what your really interested in. Here was our clearance. "After take off turn right direct STILL int.(We took off to the south, STILL is a fix on the ILS at Leesburg) then direct Linden (ldn) then J134 to Henderson (HNN) via colins and stevy (these are intersections) then direct Branson Mo. I already forgot the name of the airport down there. (There is no SID for Leesburg, if there had been one then that would also have been in the clearance.) So how does a person fly this???? Well, first of all this would not be the clearance one would get if you didn't have FMS,GPS. All we did was plug these fixes into the box (quickly might I add) and the path was drawn on the display on the panel and each fix is in the window on the box with the course to the next fix below it. Takeoff, hit the autopilot and talk fast on the radio. ATC, although they might seem uncaring is really not. They do what they have to to make the world run smoothly. (Actually, I don't know how they do it quite frankly, they're amazing) If you didn't have gps then they would have given a clearance to a VOR and then either an airway or direct to another VOR that was reasonably withing range. The questions you are asking, although good ones are really irrelevent in todays world. Please, no offense meant btw. Really the only time ATC will ask you about an intersection is if they want you to report to them when you reach one. In the old days we had complusory reporting points but for the most part these are a thing of the past because radar coverage has gotten so much better. You know if there are any other pilots that have anything to add please feel free to jump in. I don't claim to know everything thats for sure. The one thing about flying is that there is always something to learn and often more than one way of doing things. Sorry for the long answer but you sounded like you could handle it and I thought you might enjoy seeing how its done in the real world.If you still have questions I'll try to answer them.B Bjorkman

thanks very much for getting back on this and yes, i can handle a long reply, no problem at all. yea, it's a simple question i know but i couldn't figure out why, when i'd file a high altitude airway plan, it would stick in all these intersection. ATC would normally tell me to resume or follow my plan as filed, nothing about reporting at intersections so no problem really. i was wondering the last couple of days if there were any jets these days flying without some sort of GPS system. i am sure tracking intersections with a GPS is a no-brainer, and seeing that most jet aircraft have them then it does make tracking them no big deal. was wondering how they do it these days without GPS but since they do have it then problem solved. if not guess they'd have to do it the old fashioned way. roger, using fixes/intersections for SIDS and STARS along with ATC. got that. by the way, let me throw this in. what are your thoughts on using the map instead of the GPS when flying a jet in the sim. it's almost the same as far as situational awareness and doesn't clutter up the cockpit. the GPS doesn't look so bad in GA aircraft but looks a bit out of place in the panel of jet, in my opinion. i like the looks of some of those MFDs with the moving maps already there, very clean looking. yea, i know it's probably person preference but thought i'd ask. well now, guess i've beaten this horse to death so i'll let him lie where he is. he should be out of his misery by now. thanks again! william

Well, here is the way I see it with gps or the map. In the real world we use what we get in the airplane we're flying. In FS9 we can really "create" our ac the way we want to. Some people want a realistic cockpit, others aren't as particular. So its really up to you... thats called freedom. B Bjorkman