American Airlines Virtual

Hi all new commers to Vatsim flying.
When I decided to take the plunge into flying online with Vatsim, I was very apprehensive also.
I spent many hours just parked at a busy airport listening to all the communications going on between pilots and ATC.
I also spent a lot of time reading their pilot guides for new and experienced pilots. I think I read the first flight document about 20 times before I even connected to Vatsim.
All you have to do is put "Newbie obsurving proceedures" in the box and no one will worry you.
Intitally I made up my own routes which started with a SID and ended with a STAR, I made the transitions points the first and last points on the route. All of my routes in these flights went as direct as possible between these points but used a number of VORs along the way.
ATC will sometimes give you the SID or STAR and always give you the runway, if you are set up for a different runway and SID you can request these. If ATC are not too busy they will usually comply with your wishes.
I fly both FS9 and FSX and find FSNavigator and FSCommander essential tools as you can use them to see if there are any other aircraft in the area (around the airports or in the air). These have to be set up for monitoring on line traffic (an easy task). You can even use these to create your flight plan anthough I haven't manaded to do that with FSCommander yet.

Join the world of on line flying, you will enjoy it.

Wayne Szot wrote:so how do I program in the waypoints to the default FSX GPS device after I know which runway I'm going to use while at the gate?

If you want to manually change the default FSX routing. It is tediuos, but, open the edit a route screen in FSX after you create a route. It gives you options to delete and a few other things. You need to use the mouse to click on the waypoints you want added on the LITTLE map it opens up for you. Save it and give it a shorter name i.e. KDFWKLAX.pln. as it gives it a long name. You can load it in an FMC or GPS easier. Here is what I have done and still do. I have used Simroutes.com create-a-route screen where you type in all the waypoints you want to fly to and then save it from their screens and download it as what type of file you want to also i.e. FSX, FS9, LVLD, PMDG, so on and so forth. I also use FSCommander to build a flight and put in waypoints and it will save it as to what format I choose.
The FSX planner is limited in ease of use.
WLP