May I ask a similar question in here, got the same question actually but I plan on doing an around the world trip, I have actually already started, but only a 45min trip (cirrus sr22) so far to get to the coast of my home country (UK) to act as a starting point before I cross into France.
I plan on visiting any famous landmarks that I happen to cross on my flight plan as well, and I will land at small airfields, I say small but I will look out for ones with nice long runway.
Im not sure on my cruise altitude, I guess around 5000ft as I want to fly low to see things, but there may be times when I need to go above the clouds, so I need a plane capable.
There will be night flying involved as well.
Iâm not in a huge rush to get to certain locations either.
Flying time between legs: 1hr roughly
Day and night flying
Fly past any famous places on the way
Potentially all weather conditions
I started in the Cirrus SR22 mentioned above but Im not sure if i should stick with it for such a journey with all the potential weather conditions involved, plus did someone mention its not got great lights for at night?
Would the TBM be the better choice, as said I want to fly relatively low, but there may be times when I will fly higher to cross oceans and avoid nasty weather.
Iâm also a noob, also only been flying the a320, so fancy a change.
Thanks
I like the TBM for that kind of sim flying. You can go up to 31,000 feet easily to avoid most weather, itâs pressurized so no oxygen mask required up there, and itâs certified for flight into known icing. Itâs also quite fast, you can cover a couple of hundred miles in a 1 hour flight sim session. Itâs like my own personal mini-airliner but still relatively easy to operate, and you can operate it from 3,000 foot runways.
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I am flying a world trip with a C208, real-time with local weather. Total of 280 hours and 41.000 miles until now. Itâs a great plane!
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Modded DA62 with modded WT NXI will fit your bill. I did round the world across the pacific in it and in modded CJ4. TBM is a bit too fast and high if you want to gawk at the scenery and do screenshots along the way and a bit too simplistic if you want to go fast and hi.
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Planning out your flight is a key. My suggestion is to re-trace a famous real world flight. For example there is this one. First aerial circumnavigation - Wikipedia
Adjusted for range and time itâs about 80 hops. Next part is to grab navigraph charts or sky vector and figure your routing between airports. If youâre in MSFS doing flight levels in a fast jet is really counterproductive for this type of adventure, the sandbox is really good looking on the ground so cruise time is for grabbing screenshots :). So use either sky vector or navigraph and figure your way around Victor airways which are for the most part below 5 thousand feet unless youâre in a mountains. Plus in a low and slow plane it gives you plenty of opportunity to get some good practice with hand flying VOR to VOR flying plenty of landings visual and instrument diversions etc. I really enjoy DA62 mod itâs very docile very trimmable and at the same time has decent speed, climb, and ceiling characteristics.
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Thanks, hope its ok asking this in here. Iâm kind of just exploring myself really doing a short trip to random airports and working my way around the globe, Started in UK and now in France, my next leg will be towards Italy I think.
I tried the TBM but not sure I like it as its quite fast I want something slower, so will go back to the Cirrus Sr22.
My question is when I set up the flight plan on world map, Is the GPS option the best to use for the trip if im below 5000ft and have a plane equipped with the Garmin?
Also I notice with the plan all set up AP follows the red line perfectly to destination but my last leg into France I got nothing over ATC about what runway to land at, I just flew straight over the airport, perhaps the airport I selected was non operational, or do I need to set that up as I arrive manually as in request over ATC my intention to land?
I also notice in the garmin I can select a runway but not sure thats really worth doing if Im using visual guidance to land at destination.
GPS can be used for high and lows. itâs not really restricted by altitude. My humble opinion is that you should totally drop in sim flight planning. Itâs not fun at all. Half the fun of flying is actually planning your flight. The fun way to do it is actually do it yourself. The steps roughly are this.
- Spawn at your origin airport not flight planning on home screen.
- Go to either skyvector free, simbrief free, Navigraph best option not free but very reasonably priced.
and get yourself a route, with sky vector and navigraph you can build your own route or it can be generated for you. Simbrief will generate a route for you and then you can adjust it to your liking. Low slow flying is done via low enroute airways, or you can do VOR to VOR if you donât have GPS or you can do GPS waypoint to GPS waypoint. I prefer airways whenever I can find them.
- Plan your routes as if you were flying IFR. It makes it easier to follow on GPS.
Route consists of multiple parts
a) SID-Standard Instrument Departure may or may not be available may or may not be used. Thatâs the standardized routing to get you from departing runway out of the airport vicinity and to your first enroute waypoint
b) Enroute waypoints-Those are your airways VORS GPS waypoints
c) STAR-Standard Terminal Arrival Route thatâs the standardized routing that gets you from your enroute waypoint to an airport vicinity. May or may not be available may or may not be used
d) Approach IFR approach is again a standardized routing that gets you to the runway threshold. Different types of approaches for different types of airports may or may not be available. But quite a few non grass strip airports will have a published approach procedure.
You get SIDS,STARS, Approach information from the charts skyvector has them Navigraph has them better.
My guess Approach is what is missing in your GPS when you do your flight planning.
- Once you collected all your routing information plug it into your GPS yourself manually or there are download import options too. For GA low and slow short hops itâs ton of fun to do it all manually adds to immersion.You need departure airport destination airport and approach procedure loaded into GPS at the very minimum if you want GPS to line you up with a runway.
Now another way to fly which is super fun is VFR by not utilizing GPS at all but relying instead on VFR sectional charts to get yourself from one land mark to another. You can still program waypoints into GPS as a cheat but then put yourself into heading mode and try to navigate to your landmarks. There is a great app called fltplango for ipad which connects to the sim and overlays VFR sectionals over your plane location and gives you a VFR moving map.
Another in the middle way to fly is VOR to VOR where you plan your flight based on multiple ground stations and then use your Nav radios to line yourself up with VORS on proper course radials. So youâre constantly playing with radios and courses and heading modes all throughout your flight. In that mode to keep it authentic if you want to get to your runway you need to pick an ILS approach so at the end of the route you are tuning yourself to a localizer station.
Oh yeah on the subject of ATC if it is controlled airport you can go to your ATC menu and pick an option for nearest airports when youâre close to your destination tune to that airport request full stop landing and they can give you vectoring. Or you can cheat and enable landing guidance in assists menu and itâll show you fly thru gates. I actually use third party payware ATC package called Pilot2ATC it is quite a bit more immersive and feature rich at a very reasonable price and it has built in voice recognition so you can actually talk to ATC and the routing and ATC vectoring is quite a bit more robust. But in all fairness default MSFS ATC is quite capable comparing to other sims like XP for example in terms of giving you proper directions.
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Oh thatâs some very helpful info, thank you for your time. I have checked out sky vector, does that cover worldwide, I know that for IFR plans its only US.
As for the entering manually into garmin in say the Cirrus Sr22, what markers do I need to look for on the sky vector maps if I want to use GPS waypoints. I want to keep it fairly simple while Im learning still, so on garmin enter departure and destination airports and any waypoints along the way?
Just a thought if Im using direct gps from destination to arrival is there any need for waypoints in between, or are waypoints a good way of exploring areas, famous landmarks along the way?
As for ATC I use Ai pilot atc, think I will switch that off and take control.
Thanks again.
Sky vector is world wide at least low and hi IFR maps . Sectional charts there might be a gap in certain parts of the world. As for the markers it can really be anything. a waypoint a VOR a direct as the bird flies route. Think of it as a regular road map you picking the roads and streets in the sky to fly over. You can go to simbrief first and let that generate route for you between any two larger regional airports and then reverse engineer it in sky vector to see how it was done. Or you can just stick to the highways ie Airways those are the black lines crisscrossing the map and pick low Victor airways that lead you from point A to point B. Each Airway will have an entry and exit points just like a highway and major interchanges around VORs where multiple highways merge just like VOR so in Garmin you plug direct to the closest airway entry waypoint then go to menu load airway pick airway and the exit waypoint and rinse and repeat until you get closer to the destination airport and from there you pick approach routing if airport has a published approach anywhere. Navigraph is a bit more user friendly for manual planning like that. But all of them is really no different in principle than in game map if you were to do it manually. Only in game map is a gamified and skyvector and others are real world. As far as ATC goes I would just turn it off for now. Learn one thing at the time. You only need ATC to cheat around airport if you want to see fly thru landing gates. Donât over load yourself with too much information.
I would learn map route planning. first From there I would learn how to read operational flight plans from simbrief like LIDO. After that I would learn different methods of navigation, radio navigation GPS navigation different types of approaches. Of course all throughout practice your hand flying skills turns, circuits landings, stalls etc. After that graduate to proper voice controlled ATC program and then maybe fly on VATSIM :).
Thanks, so just to be sure can I put just departure and destination into garmin and it will create a plan that gps will follow?
Yes and no garmin will fly you over the waypoints you plug into it like bread crumbs. Think of it as a handheld garmin unit you use for hiking not a car garmin you use for driving that calculates route for you. You need to tell it where to go step by step. It is smart to know airways which is nothing more than collection of those breadcrumbs but that is as smart as it gets in that respect. If you plug just origin and destination it will fly you in a straight line from A to B to a middle of a destination airport and not necessarily line you up with a runway which is not really realistic since just like on the surface sky has rules of the road there could be exclusion zones there could be land features there could be weather etc. In sim terms yes you will get there to the middle of your destination airport but you could be violating whole bunch of those rules or flying yourself into the mountain if youâre low enough and didnât consult the maps. That is why you plan your route using maps first so you can then put that into garmin and why I suggest finding victor airways from sky vector because they are easy to see they are just black lines criss crossing in all directions⊠They are just like roads on the surface and they have altitudes written on them. For garmin to line you up with runway it needs origin destination and approach if there is a published approach for the destination airport at the very minimum. If there is an approach published it will give you proper vertical guidance for garmin to follow as well as lateral guidance But in between it will just fly you in a straight line A to B. Word of caution if you use skyvector DO NOT File a flight plan in skyvector itâs illegal. Sky vector is a real world navigation utility and you do have an option of filing flight plan with aviation authority and obviously you donât want to do that.
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Had my first short flight over France today, heading towards Italy.
I used little nav map to plot my course and then manually entered it into the garmin on the Cirrus Sr22.
Felt great doing it that way. I went over a few interesting places on the way, one was an abandoned airfield with all vegetation growing over it, looked on google and sure enough there was one and its used for other events now.
I had a few issues, im using Ai ATC while im learning other stuff, but when I approached my destination my ai atc did not request to land or get any response from the airfield.
Also other issue unrelated was there didnât seem to be any live traffic, maybe server issue there.
For default aircraft just use the Cessna citation longitude just donât hit any mountains while turning on autopilot and leaving the aircraft unsupervised
For payware Iâd say B2 Islander or the EMB 110
Live traffic is a hit or miss right now. You can see it around some larger airports but most of the time you just hear ATC talking to it. As far as ATC goes you can force the response most of the time by going to the nearest airport list picking up the frequency and requesting landing. I think it forces it back to VFR rules. Yeap I didnât mention little nav map itâs pretty awesome with ton of features and it could be overwhelming. Next step if youâre planning on sticking with the hobby pick yourself Pilot2ATC which is full featured and very robust AI ATC. Ditch the default and it will get you a step closer to flying on Vatsim or pilot edge :).
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Yes little nav map is great Im just using it for the basics really, just to plot my course using the detailed map and waypoints.
If I select the nearest airport, do I need to manually enter the frequency?
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With in game atc no. You just pick whatever is on the list from the ATC menu. Even the third party ATC packages would swap frequencies for you if you want.
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Slight thread bump.
I have been flying the Cirrus sr22 for the start of my world tour, but Im finding it a bit of a slog even on relatively short legs.
I have been flying between 3000-5000ft mostly so that I can see the scenery (weather permitting).
I want to get to my destination a little quicker but still want to take in the scenery and any famous landmarks I pass on the way.
Is the TBM decent at the altitudes I mentioned and going slow when I choose to sight see?
I have an affinity for the King Air 350i. Maybe not a big deal in the sim but I like that its a twin. It should get in and out of the same places the TBM will and about the same speed. Same avionics package, although the King Air 350i should have the Collins Pro Line 21 that is in the CJ4. Or build a Rockwell Collins Fusion for the King Air. I guess that is why then went with the GX and it looks more like the Fusion rather than the old school 21.
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Well Im giving the TBM another go, certainly not as simple with all the controls inside, but I will try to learn it.
I have a few things im unsure about on it.
What is TAXI throttle position for, Is that basically idle?
Also there is two barometers in the cockpit, do I need to change both when I get an altimeter reading from ATC?
Thanks
I believe TAXI is like a low idle.
If you want to press B it will update both otherwise you have to update both.
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