How does one determine which STAR to use when building a flt plan.Say I am flying from KMIA to KLAX but I am not aware of what runway will be in use because of changing winds hours in advance of my departure.I use RC4 and I am not aware how I can make changes during flt and how to alter the FMC to inpout a STAR after the flt has progressed.DO I just assign any STAR/rnwy for arrival then hopefully it sticks ???ThanksAndy

Usually a single STAR will serve multiple runways and even multiple airports. Just plan for whatever STAR you want that serves your destination airport, then when you get close, get the ATIS and plug in the RWY in use.

It can be confusing as to what STAR to use if you don't have the actual charts that show from which direction they approach the airport. If I don't have the charts which is often since I like to fly all over the world, I choose a runway first and one of the STARs that smoothly gets me to that runway looking at the flight plan in the ND. I use wind so ATC asign me that runway, or another that faces the same direction. For example if I want to fly to Miami and approach the airport from the west I will pick runway 9 and a STARR that approaches KMIA from the west(I forget wich one). I will then program the wind to come from the east at 15 or so. By setting the wind direction, ATC will give me Rwy 9,8R,8L, or runway 12 which is the crosswind runway. Once I get ATIS I have already flown most of the STAR so I change the runway to the runway ATC asigns(in the fmc). Easy since the all face the same direction, except rwy 12 which requires a bigger adjustment. If I fly with real weather the wind may be opposite and atc asign say runway 27 (Miami again approaching from the west) I will fly a downwind parallel to the runway and land from from the east folowing a standard patern. Or I let ATC vector me if flying IFR. I use FS9 atc so I don't know how it works with Radar Contact 4.