Default 747-400 autopilot and polar routes

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

OK, last night I tried a long haul...Kansas City to Geneva, Switzerland. I told the flight planner to use high-alititude airways. I plotted a course that went north from KC, then west all the way to the Beaufort Sea (north of Alaska and British Columbia). Then it did a tight U-turn back east and followed a nice arc over northern Greenland, Iceland, the UK, and then Europe. I've heard the flight planner can have issues...is this one of them? Or did the route look weird because the flight planner is trying to show a curved route on a flat map? At one point, I was going almost due west...that really seems odd. Does this mean I need to get some payware to do flight plans?Second part...the 747 only has one course/heading indicator. I got the autopilot to follow the GPS route by clicking the Nav button and making sure the Nav/GPS switch was set to GPS. There was another switch that when turned to PFD, blanked out all of my HSI.For the life of me, I couldn't get the autopilot to home in on VOR stations. I could set VOR 1 and 2 and see them in the HSI, along with the DME information. But no matter what I set the course to, the purple indicator never moved. I even went all the way around the compass with the course indicator (cycled through 360 degrees)...you'd think the purple VOR indicator would flip, but it didn't. Nav/GPS was set to Nav. There are some HSI knobs to the left of the autopilot knobs that I think are active in the 737...but they weren't active in the 747 VC or 2D cockpit. I there something I'm missing with VOR and autopilot in the 747?

[Guest blazingcessna]

The Atlantic routes were not included by Microshaft for some reason. I has my panties in a bunch too. There is a set of waypoints here http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID...misc&DLID=92835. Good luck getting them to work! If you do let me know!The PFD switch is apparently another screw-up by the Microshaft Morons. Think of it as a GNDN conduit. Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing. Any way the COURSE dial is actually the numbers in the upper right hand corner of the HSI. Point over it and you will see what I mean. I have not tried using the AP to home in on a VOR, but the APP function does the exact same thing while on the ILS. Try using the LOC switch. Ill try it on my end, If I can figure out why my stuff wont go over 3fps today!!BTW Bring back the 94 proof Old No.7!!!!

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

AHAH!! So there is a Course indicator...and I was using the Heading indicator...no wonder why the VOR wouldn't work.I'll try the waypoints.BTW, when I was over the Arctic (at night) at FL310, I maxed all the settings to see what would happen (I have a couple of scenery templates saved like Balanced, Water, Night, Max). It ran at 25 FPS (the limit). What a way to watch the sun go down and the moon come up. WOW!I've had light bloom disabled until I maxed everything...it does wonders for the sun.Then some clouds showed up and I went to 17 FPS. Not a problem for me. It was cool. Kind of exciting when you hit the ATC nearest airports list and it gives you this list (hope the engines don't fail):

[Mace 1,904]

>OK, last night I tried a long haul...Kansas City to Geneva,>Switzerland. I told the flight planner to use high-alititude>airways. Why didn't you have the flight planner do a GPS route? Then you would have a nice great-circle polar route to fly on.Using high alt airways is guaranteed to get you a herky-jerky route, if it works at all.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

[Daveo 36]

The GPS Route gave me a pretty accurate path from KEWR to ESSA Stockholm. Pretty close to the real flights Ive taken to and from there a number of times in terms of route and time.Other then that I also use Flt sim commander 8 for some preflight routes I can plan , save and use later.

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

I should have done a GPS route. But I like having all the waypoints and VOR stations along the way. I turn off the GPS autopilot and try to navigate the old fashioned way...I am going to stick the oceanic waypoints in and see what happens.

[RFields5421 1]

For some reason which no one can fathom - Microsoft continues to use ENTRY / EXIT points for trans-Atlantic flights above the equator.In FS2004 and FSX - the waypoint north of the Alaska / Canada border is always used if the aircraft origin point is north of approximately Washington DCIf the origin airport is farther south - a waypoint near the Cape Verde Islands is used.This is better than FS2002 - where the flight planner sent everyone to a waypoint just off the east coast of Tunisia before the European airways were used.I wonder it there is some duplication of airway names or waypoints. Computers HATE duplication - and Murphy's Law says the wrong one will always be chosen.There is no way that Microsoft could have the Flight Planner realistic because the NAT tracks change everyday.But I simply cannot understand why they don't put some logic that would identify North Atlantic flights and have a half-dozen or so NAT tracks which would be used.

[Guest tcable]

You can always use a third party planner- I prefer fsbuild. TH eplans work wti FSX just fine- you simply configure the app to use teh FSX directory or do a copy as I do from my fs9 folder.

[Guest JackDanielsDrinker]

OK, I finished my flight. The course indicator on the top right of the HSI worked fine. I used VOR across France and landing the flying tub at Geneva.I touched down with 5000 lbs of fuel left due to my circuitous route...the thing stopped on a dime.When I went over Paris, I could see what looked like a nuclear power plant at FL310. The cooling towers were Autogened.