General Flying.

[Dadtom65]

When I fly I do try to start the aircraft properly now, that is the single prop aircraft not the biggies but never actually plan a flight. How do you fly, do you plan where your going or like me just have Flight and when I get fed up if I see an airport I will land there. As been thinking I should start doing everything by the book. Mean I do have Flight planners but very rare do I use them. Derek.

[Scott Harmes]

It's a little bit of everything for me Derek.  I like flying everything from helicopters to airliners.  I enjoy just loading up at an airport and flying circuits and around the area to explore the scenery and airport.  I also enjoy planning a full airliner flight from start to finish, usually basing it off real world routes, weather, times, aircraft etc.  I like flying single props, twin props, regional airliners, jet airliners, military aircraft new and old, helicopters........

 

Like you, at times I will just take off from an airport and fly and when I have had enough I will land at the nearest airport, or I will cut the engines and test out my skills with an emergency landing in a field or on a road.

 

Over the past couple of years I have really increased my tubeliner flying, and now I use products like FS2Crew, GSX and sometimes VoxATC.  I do enjoy going through the whole planning procedure, checklists, startup etc.  Especially with FS2Crew and a good study level aircraft I find flying airliners very enjoyable.

 

Cheers,

[jpreou]

When I was actually flying, couple years ago, I would flight plan properly, on paper with real weather, an actual local VFR flight in NZ, just as I would for a real plane in real skies with real weather. By hand too, with the E6B 'manual' flight computer for wind drift and what have you. Usually short flights, less than an hour and a half at 105 kts. Then I'd fly it in the sim, visual, and based solely on my plan. It is surprising how accurate the sim is. I once planned then flew a triangle and ended up just a couple hundred metres and less than 2 minutes overhead my third waypoint, all based on real-world manual flight planning and then flying the plan (speeds, headings, altitude, etc); *very* gratifying.

[Ken Terry]

Derek, if you have Plan G, pick an airport and click on it and select "start flight plan here" then decide to go say north and find another airport and click on it "add to plan" etc. etc.

You can track your flight on a 10" Android tablet using FsMoveMap   http://www.rahsim.com/index.php/downloads

Also I have created a random plan generator if you don't know where to fly next, PM me and I will send it to you via email.

Cheers

Ken

 

[tttocs]

There are also real world tools that can be used in the sim for planning.  I use fltplan.com and the associated FlightPlan Go app on my tablet.  Even though it's a RW tool, it features direct support for FSX/P3D and XP.  Flight planning, geo-referenced RW charts and approaches, wx, airport info and on and on.

 

I plan my sim flights much as I used to my RW ones.  It helps sell the immersion for me.  BTW, "planning" doesn't necessarily mean a flight plan which must be followed to the letter.  I'll often plan a scenic flight in over an area with an eventual return to the airport of origin.  But I still walk through the process of doing things like getting wx info, doing a weight and balance for the load I'll be carrying that day, reviewing local airspace and so on.

 

Scott

[Bullfox]

In FSX i usually fly Visual Flight Rules with GPS navigation from one airport to the next depending mostly on the airports I like.  Lately I fly the Comanche, the Twin Comanche, and the Bonanza.  I probably do some things different from most.  I tweaked the Twin Comanche config file to simulate a turbonormalized engine so I could fly it higher and faster.  If I want to simulate real weather I go to Windy.com and use settings in user defined weather to simulate the data on Windy.com.   Lately I have also been flying Manfred Jahn's  C-47 all over Alaska.

I just use the flight planing software native to FSX.

 

 I occasionally go on campaigns.  I took off from Santa Barbara and Flew the C-47 all the way up to Alaska.  Now I am just flying it around up there.  If you fly airliners you can try to simulate actual airline schedules.  I flew the C-47 loaded up with cargo which I called relief aid from the West Coast to Florida after one of the big hurricanes down there. When I landed in Florida I made a small contribution to the Red Cross for disaster relief.  I wouldn't worry too much about what other people do.  Just use your imagination.