Hi,

Look here about a great SkyVector (free toll) tutorial for flight planning: 

Mike

On an aircraft like this the flight plan is unlikely to be onerous to enter due to the short range and types of flight. 

If say you were going to replicate an ULH in the 777-200LR from Dubai to San Francisco then you really don’t want to be entering every airway and fix! 

I would simply use SimBrief as DIY flight planning isn’t easy and you’re not going to know the correct airways and their transitions etc. 

Once you have the SimBrief plan, enter it manually into the aircraft FMS.

 

 

Thanks everyone. I appreciate it, and give this stuff a go. 

Gaz

I understand there are some good tools out there, such as Simbrief and Skyvector, but isn't it simply possible to get P3D to do the flight plan, print it out, then manually enter it into the FMC? 

Gaz 

56 minutes ago, Gary McCluskey said:

I understand there are some good tools out there, such as Simbrief and Skyvector, but isn't it simply possible to get P3D to do the flight plan, print it out, then manually enter it into the FMC? 

Gaz 

Simbrief is the gold standard of free flight planners. 

5 hours ago, Mikelab6 said:

Look here about a great SkyVector

I love the l look of Skyvector, but as the video says, it only covers the USA. 

Gaz

1 hour ago, Gary McCluskey said:

I understand there are some good tools out there, such as Simbrief and Skyvector, but isn't it simply possible to get P3D to do the flight plan, print it out, then manually enter it into the FMC? 

Gaz 

Yes, both P3D and FSX have inbuilt Flight Planners.  On the load screen of P3D (V4) Look a the bottom of the Free Flight screen.  You will see a button that says Flight Planner.  Click it. Select departure airport, destination airport.  Flight Plan type select IFR then Routing High Altitude Airways.  Select whatever cruising altitude you want.  Finally, to the right is a button that says NavLog.  Open and print.  However, I would highly discourage this function.  Its not upkept normally to the current AIRAC in your payware aircraft so you might have lots of airway discrepancies when you load the FMS.  And the fuel burn is undoubtedly unreliable.  So for the most accurate Nav Database and accurate fuel burn you'll need to utilize something like Simbrief or PFPX.

 

10 minutes ago, thibodba57 said:

However, I would highly discourage this function.  Its not upkept normally to the current AIRAC in your payware aircraft so you might have lots of airway discrepancies when you load the FMS

Great stuff, thanks for that advice. I'll try and use Simbrief for both P3Dv4 and the aircraft itself. That comment regarding AIRAC has always bothered me, I doubt my aircraft and P3Dv4 will be in sync. 

Gaz

9 minutes ago, Gary McCluskey said:

 

Great stuff, thanks for that advice. I'll try and use Simbrief for both P3Dv4 and the aircraft itself. That comment regarding AIRAC has always bothered me, I doubt my aircraft and P3Dv4 will be in sync. 

Gaz

http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids3.html  Download and install the world Navaids Package and the ILS/Rwy Regional update.  Make sure you install the whole world when you do.  Then http://www.aero.sors.fr/navint.html worldwide fix update.  Then finall http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids.html update the Magdec.  Should be a somewhat decent update to the aged system.  Take you 10-15 min tops.  Mostly self installers.

Thanks for that - I'll give it a go. 

Gaz

13 hours ago, thibodba57 said:

http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids3.html  Download and install the world Navaids Package and the ILS/Rwy Regional update.  Make sure you install the whole world when you do.  Then http://www.aero.sors.fr/navint.html worldwide fix update.  Then finall http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids.html update the Magdec.  Should be a somewhat decent update to the aged system.  Take you 10-15 min tops.  Mostly self installers

Thanks for this, and I've gone through your instructions.  To create a plan from EGNT to EGKK, I then used Simbrief and exported the plan for P3D (there is no option to export it for this aircraft). I then try to manually enter the plan into the aircraft's FMS, but there are a number of waypoints not available on the aircraft, so I have to delete them from the P3D plan (so ATC wouldn't have a go at me for not including them in my path). Is that all that's possible? I think I may be teaching myself IFR on the wrong aircraft. 

It sounds like you’re going the long way round to solve your problem. Entering a flight plan from Newcastle to Gatwick (ah I remember those days, operated by BA 737-400s and then latterly Q400s of Flybe) should be very simple. 

The problem as I see it is that you’re trying to use an aircraft with a very basic FMC and using it to plug in a flight plan that will allow you to navigate using the default ATC. The problems are that your SimBrief route will (probably) include the STAR for Gatwick, which the default ATC can’t see so weird things will happen and it won’t descend you in time/vector you all over the south east/constantly nag so my first bit of advice is to forget about using it.

If you want to learn IFR then actually it’s ironically a lot easier to do it in something like an Airbus where the aircraft will fly most of it for you. Or if you’re feeling brave then the Q400 will to a certain extent do most of the flying whilst you try not to let it kill you.

Just out of interest, what FMC is in the Caranedo aircraft? 

 

10 minutes ago, Airline2Sim said:

Just out of interest, what FMC is in the Caranedo aircraft

I'm not sure how to answer that - the web simply says FMS system. It does use ProLine21 and it uses the October 2013 Navigraph database - and I have a feeling that is what is causing the problems - the Navigraph data in P3D is probably not the same as that in the aircraft - am I thinking right there?

What's going on in my head is that I could be using the P3D planner, but removing the airways that are not in the FMC (otherwise I will have trouble from ATC), or I could use SimBrief, but then I would have to remove any airways that are not in either P3D or the aircraft! Which is best - or is there another option?

I'm getting the feeling that I am not looking into this properly - I know that data gets updated monthly, and our P3D aircraft don't have the same data as P3D, so what is the solution?  Does ProATC fix this, for example? Should I be paying for the updates - but then can I load the update into the 3rd party aircraft like this one?

Oh I love Simbrief. Before I used PFPX but now I only use Simbrief, especially since you can use the 'Simbrief Downloader' to download the flightplans in various formats to various aircraft folders / systems.

Within a few minutes I am set to go, with an accurate flightplan, fuel & payload calculation. You download all the files through the Downloader to the flightplan folders of the PMDG/Aerosoft/Other Aircrafts (But also P3D, so you can load the flightplan in P3D for ATC purposes or so). With PMDG & Aerosoft Airbus you just load the aircraft at the airport and then load the flightplan as Company Route.

11 minutes ago, Kristiaan-D said:

Within a few minutes I am set to go, with an accurate flightplan, fuel & payload calculation

If that is right, do you double check that Simbrief supports downloads for an aircraft you're about to buy? Carenado have already told me I can't use the Simbrief exporter here, and if I try to enter the flightpath manually into the aircraft, there are waypoints it doesn't know about. 

It gives me the impression that there are far fewer aircraft out there that you can create a plan for using IFR? For example, in the Simbrief list of exports, are there any Carenado aircraft?