Help for newbie please!

[Peter Allison 0]

I use FSX Steam Edition, and have just come back to the hobby after a gap of a year or two.

I don't have any payware aircraft (though I do spend money on scenery!) so use the freeware aircraft available as well as the stock ones, so no real FMS!

Yesterday I was able to put together a flight plan using Little Nav Map, and the aircraft flew the SID and onward flight without any problem - I saved the plan in .pln format.

Today I tried to use the same flight plan and all the intermediate fixes in the flight plan (for instance in the SID) have disappeared in FSX (but not in Little Nav Map of course). Clearly I am doing something wrong!

A quick 2nd question - I run the server on the FSX computer and Little Nav Map on another PC and am able to get the two to communicate nicely. Is there some way to start the server every time Windows loads?

Loving Little Nav Map, lots to learn yet but a big thank-you for helping the flight sim community!

Peter Allison, UK

PS I have had a Navigraph subscription in the past but don't have one at the moment.

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

Let me be the first to welcome you back!

I'm one of those FMS/FMGS guys, and while I love LM I'll let someone more familiar with the answer your question. I haven't used FSX in about 10 years now, so.)

Just wanted to say Welcome Back!

 

[fppilot 4,371]

1 hour ago, DaveCT2003 said:

Just wanted to say Welcome Back!

 

+2

[albar965 1,043]

Hi Peter,

welcome back!

13 hours ago, Peter Allison said:

Yesterday I was able to put together a flight plan using Little Nav Map, and the aircraft flew the SID and onward flight without any problem - I saved the plan in .pln format.

Today I tried to use the same flight plan and all the intermediate fixes in the flight plan (for instance in the SID) have disappeared in FSX (but not in Little Nav Map of course). Clearly I am doing something wrong!

Depends on the used aircraft and GPS. The FSX default GPS cannot show SID and STAR. Only approaches. And you have to select the approaches manually in the GPS. It cannot load them from a PLN file. Add-on aircraft might be different.

LNM saves annotations in the PLN file which allow *only* LNM to recover SID, STAR and approaches when loading the file. FSX cannot read these.

Little Navmap has options to convert the procedures to waypoints when saving. This method has some limitations. LNM cannot reload the procedures if this is checked, for example.
See here: https://www.littlenavmap.org/manuals/littlenavmap/release/2.4/en/MENUS.html#save-waypoints-for-approaches
Mabye you had these enabled. I recommend to leave them unchecked.

13 hours ago, Peter Allison said:

A quick 2nd question - I run the server on the FSX computer and Little Nav Map on another PC and am able to get the two to communicate nicely. Is there some way to start the server every time Windows loads?

You can put the Little Navconnect link into the Windows autostart folder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\).

You can even change the options in the file link to start it minimized.

Regarding networking with LNM: Have a quick look at the LNM manal (if not already done). A lot of people think that they have to share their scenery library on the network or install a second simulator on the remote/client computer. This is absolutely not needed. You only copy one scenery file to the remote and LNM is fully set up.
https://www.littlenavmap.org/manuals/littlenavmap/release/2.4/en/INTRO.html#how-to-run-a-network-setup

Alex

[Peter Allison 0]

Many thanks for the 'welcome back'. I have to follow my hobby in my garage/workshop so it's not really a winter hobby!

Many thanks to Alex for his very comprehensive and helpful reply. I will go back to reading those bits of the manual I have obviously not read properly.

Bye for now,

Peter