How To Make Abacus Co Pilot 3. 5 Work In FSX

[Guest iwantmydc3]

Hi all:Several users have been asking about Abacus Co Pilot 3.5, and I have responded as Co Pilot is one of my all time favorite programs for Flight Simulator. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a flight planner that runs seperately from FSX, that reads your scenery files and creates maps from them, complete with all airports and navigational aid info. It contains a combination GPS and autopilot unit that can be installed in any FS aircraft. This gives many aircraft that did not have modern autopilots, or any at all, capabilities like altitude hold, nav hold, slaving to the GPS and so forth. Once it's installed it reads all of your scenery files (it is advertised to work with add on scenery also), and divides it into map sets of geographic areas. To use it, you open a map set, for example, the continental US map, and then to create your flight plan you can use either a "quick planner" tool that works like the built in flight planner, e.g. you pick, say, LAX to Atlanta, or (and this is what I enjoy), you can use the "plotter" tool to make your flight plan-you click first on your starting point, then go across the map and any other airports, navaids, etc you click will be added as waypoints. You can print "sectional" type maps of your route, airport diagrams, and approach plates. The best thing is it's all right from your own scenery. Once you've created or loaded your plan, you start Flight Simulator; the GPS unit can either use the plan loaded in memory, or it shows a list of saved ones. Start your flight like you normally do, i.e. pick a saved one, or start a new one within FS, when your flight is loaded, bring up the Co Pilot GPS, and select the "RTE" button; this will bring up your list of flight plans, with the last saved or one in memory on top. Move the cursor to the one you want and click the "SET" button. Next you take off, and, as you would when you engage FS' autopilots, you activate your "AP" "NAV" "ALT" etc buttons. The unit will now fly to each waypoint in your flight plan. Well, there's just one thing though (it happened to me, anyhow)-somehow after it's first installed there's one minor little problem-Co Pilot, maybe becuase of "Spaghetti Code," (it has been revised a lot), doesn't know where to look for your saved flight plans, or the file it has open. This presents you with a blank GPS, which was very frustrating. If you get Co-Pilot, the problem may not happen for you-I would try loading it first to see if it works right.If it doesn't, I found out how to fix it:1. Install Co-Pilot.2. NAVIGATE to your FSX Directory. (Most people of the default of Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator X, but if you changed that during setup, go to yours).3. NAVIGATE to the FLIGHTS folder.4. CREATE a new folder under the FLIGHTS folder, called "myflts".5. NAVIGATE to your Co-Pilot folder. (Default: Program FilesAbacusCoPilotv35).6.Look in the first subfolder, calld "Adv"7. You will see a .txt file called "FlightPlansDirs.txt" open that file in your favorite text editor (notepad will do fine). 8. EDIT the file to read as follows (again my example is with MY paths; you may need to chage them to fit yours:1 C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XFlightsmyflts2 C:Documents and SettingsUSER NAMEMy DocumentsFlight Simulator X Files (Of course you substitute your own USER NAME for USER NAME :) )SAVE and COPY the file from the ADV folder to the CoPilotv35 folder.Note: you must edit exactly as above including the line numbers. Now, I dont understand this fully because myflts doesnt seem to be used, but once i did this everything worked. (It says you must leave Flightsmyflts at the end of the path; that's why I made the folder).Then,load Co Pilot, and create and save a flight plan; open FS, load or create a flight, and if you've installed the CoPilot GPS in that aircraft, the flight plan(s)should show up in your GPS unit. I found this info in the "GPS.RTF" file located in the ADV folder. DISCLAIMER: This worked for me. I hope its helpful to you if you do have the "not finding the flight plans" problem, but if it doesn't you will need to consult with Abacus. Good luck :)To check out the program:http://www.abacuspub.com/I'm not a shill, I just love the program :)