Geez...I give up. <opens wallet>

[Barry Theodore]

Hi Christopher,
I was never one for change and used to use FsNavigator, I found this to be very good but once there was no support for it and no where to download the SIDS and STARS I had to change. Added to this fact was that it did not work in FSX.

I decided to give FsCommander a try, it does an excellent job of creating flight plans (I usually use flight-aware for the route information) and these can be exported in both FS9 and FSX format. This product also appears to have active support as I have just found a recent update. You can also use this on-line to show other aircraft, although for some reason in mine there is a little lag.

The sad fact is it costs money to purchase and a little for the latest AIRAC's, but once you get used to it you will save many hours of flight planning. You will be able in most cases to just put in the departure and arrival airports, cut and paste the waypoints, add the SID and STAR, "Save As" and you are ready to fly, and let's face it that's what we want to do.

Hope this helps.

[Wayne Pierce]

Chris,
You maybe a Cheap Date, but... You don't need to spend money to do your flight planning.

http://avn.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=aerona ... ions/d_tpp

Here are the latest FREE download charts for the USA. I have links to other countries as well.

http://www.simroutes.com/fb2/showplans.aspx

This one has most routes in it already for the big cities. You plug in where you go and it will make a plan for your flight simulator FMC.

http://www.airnav.com

Good information about the airport places.

These are what I use to make flight plans with. Not one of them cost anything to use.

It is that most of us are lazy and want others to do the work for us, and then complain it isn't good enough.

So what's the deal? After the times here you have spent you should know that the MSFS planner is not the way to go, shouldn't you?

Your FS life is easier now, but you still have to get your own coffee.

WLP

[Theodore Martin]

Chris,
I'm like you and didn't want to purchase a flight planner. Years ago I broke down and bought FSNavigator. It was the best purchase I ever made for FS. Then I got FSX and went through the hassle of using the FSX planner and finding all those non-existent intersections as you pointed out. That being so much of a pain I started launching FS9, then launching FSNavigator from within FS9 to create a flight plan and save it. Once created I could now start FSX and read in the flight plan I created for FS9. Worked will except it was a little of a hassle to launch on sim, create plan, save, then launch other sim. Also it never put you at a gate in FSX. You would always end up in the middle of the airport somewhere.

One thing I found was a freeware program called Virtual Dispatch. It does a good job and is somewhat easy to use. One nice thing is that it will even position intersections that your FS may not have (not updated to the latest AirNav) by using the lat-long for the waypoint. You can find it at www.virtual-dispatch.net.

[Theodore Martin]

........
I downloaded that Virtual Dispatch, and I'm trying to plot a flight from JFK to EGLL, but I don't know how to put lat/long points in that program, or the current NAT, so it will accept it. Any help?

I have not used it for oversea's flights so don't know if it supports NAT.

As for lat/long, my previous comment was that if you have a waypoint name that is not in your current FS program Virtual Dispatch will enter the waypoint into your flight plan and plot it on your FS map by using the waypoint lat/long. Don't know if it will go the other way by entering the lat/long directly. However, if you know the lat/long you can easily enter it in the FS flight planner. Open your flight plan in FS and on edit tab insert a waypoint between the two points it should connect. Then select the waypoint and change the lat/long to the correct value.