WestWind Virtual Airlines

As someone who has had X Plane 11 for awhile now and not figured out how to program all the buttons and the like that FSX does automatically I have not used it. Several of you kind folks have given me some ideas that makes me want to try and now I get to the next problem. I know many of you who are real pilots or may just enjoy using an FMC when you fly and it seems that all the type of aircraft that come with X Plane and all the add on aircraft all require using the FMC. My problem is that I have flown for between 9-10,000 flight hours successfully using a GPS but have had problems learning how to use the FMC that came with a couple of add on aircraft I bought not realizing that it could not be flown with the GPS. Trying to learn and use the FMC aggravated me to the point where it was just too much trouble and work for me to enjoy. Is there a way to fly X Plane 11 using the GPS or am I stuck with having to go thru all the stuff that an FMC requires? I am not one who wants to use the PMDG or Wilco add on's where you have to flip every switch in the cockpit to just get my aircraft started and I even gave a way a DCS A-10 version to Hal because I could not get the engines started much less fly it. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and comments and I look forward to seeing what FS 2020 holds. Thanks and God bless all.

Paul,

Aircraft that have an FMS/FMC as its navigation system have the FMS/FMC. There is a misnomer here as a Flight Management System manages
a little more then the navigation. The "auto-pilot" is also linked into the the FMS too.

X-Plane being a newer sim package goes more with the latest greatest stuff, glass cockpits and FMS's. Your going to need to learn the new
stuff and how it works to get to a point to be able to fly them. You need to take time to gain proficiency with using them.

I would suspect that FS20 from Microsoft will also be subjecting all of us to newer technology. The basic flight plan is the Biggy. Figure out if
there is a way to load the thing from a file. You still need to deal with fuel and weight. The FMC/FMS controls most all the parameters of your
flight. More so then just a GPS that is following a line waypoint to waypoint.

We need to find a way to provide instruction for how to do this.

X-Plane 11 has become my primary sim, and yes there is a bit of a learning curve to using an FMC vs a GPS. The Default FMC that comes with X-Plane 11 is a good one to start out with. It does not have the advanced bell and whistles the come with payware aircraft with custom FMC's, and a lot of freeware aircraft use the Default FMC also. I will see about putting together a video to help

I struggled a little with learning the setup of the FMC. I think it is a lot easier than learning a GPS. Actually, the default X-Plane FMC is quite simple to set up. I learned by watching Youtube Videos. There are plenty out there. I now have a couple payware aircraft that have more complex FMC, but once I learned the default FMC, the others were quicker to learn.

As compared to FS9 and FSX not requiring use of an FMC the older systems are much simpler to use. Set up the from and to airports and decide what altitude you want to fly and the GPS will set you right up using direct, VOR's and several other ways. Using the FMC having to go thru the STAR's, SID's and all the other stuff you need to program with is not something I think I will enjoy once I get it to work. Last time I heard when you do stuff you do not enjoy many of us call it work and not a hobby. I guess I need to get with the times or pray my old laptop and FS9 keeps on working. Thanks for the input guys.

You don't have to enter SIDS and STARS. You can simply enter a series of waypoints. Many times I lay out a flight plan in Syvector and just enter the waypoints. You can also save a flightplan in planners like skyvector or Simbrief then load them directly into the FSM. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.

Using the FMC having to go thru the STAR's, SID's and all the other stuff you need to program with is not something I think I will enjoy once I get it to work.

Paul,

Bob's right... Using an FMC/FMS requires "planning" of what ever route you use to fly from one point to another. I have used FMS/FMC's for the
better part of my time with the airline. In that time I've used both systems to navigate, and truth be told, I find the GPS system more difficult
an more restrictive. the GPS system in FS9 and FSX cannot be updated easily. It requires modification of airport AFCADS to insert current
waypoints, so the GPS is locked in a never-changing time frame, that goes more out of date each day. FMS's that are not updated suffer the
same fate.

Both require use to gain the ever prevailing "proficiency". the only way that you will gain that is to use either, allot. In any simulator. being able
export the plan to the sim helps to streamline the planning and getting the plan into the sim. I treat the planning process as a real-world
exercise and actually do that as a side to just flying. The only stuff I do without a plan is the local VFR stuff around an airport, such as
pattern work. For a real-world pilot, planning a flight is the piece that makes the flight look as easy as it is. I have not seen much on the
planning part of flying, even from real-world pilots out on the web. Another idea for a training video.

Mark I agree that for real world pilots who like my friend Hal likes to flip every switch on the C-130 aircraft he has and for those who like to spend 20 minutes looking at the metar, selecting VOR waypoints and other things I used to do flying online it is an enjoyable thing but, I like to get in my aircraft usually with the engines running, put in my beginning and ending point and fly. Upon landing I do the shutdowns and record my flight time. I fly long distance high cargo or PAX flights, it is my thing. With a bunch of flight hours using the GPS requiring only to set up my departure airport and arrival airport then using the AI ATC to guide me in for a great landing that is simplicity in my eyes and like I said I have done this for almost 10,000 flight hours since I started doing this. In my mind this is what makes flight simming fun and why Westwind is a great VA because within reason we can do it our way and enjoy what we do. All the detailed stuff in between has not interested me much.

There are some good resources at the training center part of the WW website in the advanced training area.

Admittedly some of the stuff there is out dated and much of it is geared towards over the ocean flying but the basics on planning haven't really changed much over the years.

FMS has become second nature for me, mostly from my real world flying. I couldn't honestly operate the default GPS that fs9 or FSX very well, but that's mostly because I haven't taken the time to learn it. While most FMC/FMS are pretty similar there can be stark differences between the avionics manufacturers. The Universal UNS series are quite different from anything made by Collins for instance. Most airliner FMS/FMC units seem to me to be pretty similar.

For flight planning I started using SimBrief around 5-6 years ago and haven't really gone anywhere else. I do check on flightaware and a couple of other sites if the routing that simbrief has seems odd. The default aircraft profiles on simbrief are pretty good. When I started with them I took the time to build a custom fleet based on the specs in our hangar for our fleet. I'd say simbrief has default profiles for about 85-90% of the airliners in our fleet.

The beauty of simbrief is twofold for me. First if you're already keeping your FMS data up to date with Navigraph, then you can also keep the nav data set simbrief is using updated, it's included in your navigraph subscription and simbrief's webpage has an easy basically one step process to keeping updated. Second Simbrief lets you export your flightplan in many different formats including all the popular payware aircraft as well as default FS9/FSX formats that you can then load in the built in flight planning function in the sim.

Kim you guys did a great job with our fleet of free and payware aircraft which is one of the big benefits I tell my friends we have access to when joining us but it goes back to simplicity for me. With the GPS from point to point flying offline, I do not worry about updated STAR's SID's and any of that and because I use an older flight sim I all I need is the airport diagram and the ILS landing charts for whichever runways has them. No ILS I use the Mark One eyeball system to get my aircraft on the ground and am very happy if they have a PIPI system helping me get down. I have 14 binders of airport diagrams and charts and a subscription to a pay site for the ones I cannot find for free on Flightaware or using the VATSIM sources. I used to be required to fly on VATSIM twice a week, on Friday and Sunday nights when on the staff at Pacific Airways Miami hub. I worked for my friend Hal as his Senior Chief Pilot. It was expected that staff would be there. I checked the metar for the takeoff and arrival airport so I would use the correct runway if there was no ATC and if there was I knew where I was going to depart from. I did the VOR to VOR flight plan sometime using the software program I had and the whole deal. Once when KSFO was the fly in location, I overheard the ATC telling a pilot using an FMC like you and Mark and many others that he had to change his STAR for some reason and it jammed that pilot up as we were not that far out from getting in the approach and landing pattern at a very busy VATSIM event airport. In my case I advised the ATC I was using GPS and would appreciated vectors and had no problem. Another time we had an event at KDEN and I decided to fly out of KABQ which was not very busy and because I liked flying east bound due to the higher airspeed. When I requested flight plan clearance the ATC on duty aggravated the fool out of me telling me I had to use one of the SID's for departure to the point I shut down FSX and restarted my flight departing from Kansas City where the ATC folks were great. I did my best to never ever fly out of KABQ again on VATSIM and I racked up 2,400-2,500 hours total. Maybe it makes me a lazy pilot but I enjoy the takeoffs and landings a whole lot more than spending a lot of time flipping switches and going thru data to design and set up my flight. I am glad the option is there for you guys that enjoy it and I am also thankful that the GPS has made it possible for me to fly almost 10,000 hours without it. I did buy a cargo B752 with only an FMC I had a heck of a time trying to remember the processes and never used it. It was too much like work for me and it just would not click in my mind. Thanks for doing all you did to help us get where we are and for that I thank you and again for all of you commenting here I appreciate that as well. Take care and God bless all of you. This is a great VA.