I am a student been trying to fly X-plane 11, but the FMS and flight planning a problem.

I finally subscribed to Navigraph for one month.

I would like know how to maximize my use, issues under consideration.

• If I create a pile of flight plans now will I be able to use them when my subscription runs out?
• are there any other unforeseen problems with making a pile of flight plans
• etc etc
• etc

Thanx for you thot and condsideration

 

 

That would be doable. The only thing is that your Navdata wouldnt match real world navdata after your sub runs out. That might be a problem for online flying. If you dont do that, I dont see any problem.

If you open a Simbrief account (free) and connect it to your Navigraph account, you can prepare flightplans with Simbrief even after the end of your Navigraph subscription: in that case you'll use the same AIRAC cycle, plus you'll have the correct weather (if you fly with real weather) with the appropriate runaways.

If you are going for realism, there is nothing wrong with making a pile of flight plans, this is after all what many airlines do, however, at the time the flight is actually made, these are always checked against NOTAMs to ensure they can actually be flown, so to be 'realistic', you would also have to check that. There are a number of things which crop up in NOTAMs which can prevent a flight plan from being used without some modification.

Weather is an obvious thing which can affect flight routings, but there are also temporary airspace restrictions, for example, in the Continental US, there will sometimes be restrictions placed on entering airspace if a military exercise is taking place or if the POTUS is making a flight in the area with one of the official aircraft such as Air Force One or Marine One. Other countries often have similar restrictions for their dignitaries, for example, in the UK, any Royal flight route has 'purple airspace' assigned to it, and you are asked to avoid this on your flight routings. Again in the UK, military exercises are frequently carried out over the North Sea and whilst these can extend outside the UK's airspace, they are often conducted as part of NATO's training, so restrictions can be quite extensive in European airspace when one of these is taking place and other European nations are also part of these exercises. I have occasionally seen UK NOTAMs which warned pilots that GPS signal reception was going to be jammed as part of a military exercise, which meant that although you were not prevented from flying in some areas, it was not recommended that you do so if relying on GPS for your navigation. Ironically, such NATO exercises over the North Sea are known to attract non-NATO military aircraft, most notably Russian Air Force Tu-95 'Bear' bombers, which will use this as an opportunity to test their own combat navigation capabilities, by conducting probing missions against UK airspace under 'wartime' conditions, and the last thing you want is for a Russian nuclear bomber which is not flying under that area's air traffic control,, to be crossing your flight route, so it obviously makes sense to pay attention to all those NOTAMs!

Beyond all that military malarkey and wargaming madness, it's not uncommon for navigation beacons to occasionally be switched off for maintenance purposes, and so if your plans include on such beacon which is experiencing this, it could be something which may require attention.

Although real world nav data does change as time goes by, the changes are not usually significant from month-to-month. If you have the latest cycle installed, you’ll probably be good to go for quite some time. Sometimes, the changes are minor - a SID called METRO TWO might become METRO THREE because one particular crossing restriction has changed altitude. In that case you could still use the old version.

The thing you are most likely to miss out on as time goes by are new GPS/RNAV approaches, which are constantly being added by the FAA and aviation authorities in other countries.

Thank you so much for all your replies, as I,m just starting I,m not to the point where expecting a realistic experience at this pt. I,m only flying around my room, not the world.

Good to here this info, as I get better and board I will prolly step out look for more reality.

Again thanx!
 

:-/🤗