I bought the plane yesterday and my biggest grief so far is the fact that there is no U2U forum like what PMDG has (amongst many other).
This type of forum is hugely useful to the users. Since this is a complex aircraft (that’s why I bought it) and Fenix released neither friendly sample flight docs or videos (as you point out the FCOM can’t replace those), users are obviously going to have questions that others who went through this can answer to.
I had a look at their Discord server, this is a huge huge mess, a single giant chatroom with nothing organised. Man… Why in the world haven’t they open a forum…
But ok I hear it’s a great aircraft so I’ll hang in there and work around these inconveniences.
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Yeah, I am not a fan of Discord either. But there is some sort of forum with organized threads.
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Thank you for the screenshot: I didn’t have this community-forum on my discord page. But I now see (thanks to your post) that I can click “Browse Channels” and enable it. So now I can see it.
Yes, because in addition to all this, I am unfamiliar with Discord, I hadn’t used it before yesterday, so I have my own learning curve on this thing too lol.
Thanks for the Manual, I didn’t have it and this is going to be useful I think.
Let me explain. I’m PPL and ATPL frozen but as you may know for the ATPL the reference aircraft in our books is the B737 (the PMDG model has been hugely helpful for my exams by the way). But I don’t know anything about airbus aircraft so I thought this Fenix is the one I need to widen my horizon a little bit. I purchased this book <here>, it is very descriptive and does a good job at explaining the various systems of the airplane so I can see the obvious differences with the B737 I’m more used to, but it can’t replace a manual. Thanks again for the help.
I’m a bit confused.
I do not have a Navigraph subscription.
When I do an Init Request in the INIT page of the MCDU, I have a “INVALID F-PLN UPLINK” error message, which I understand could be due to the fact that Simbrief is using Airac 2303 (23-Mar 2023 to 19-Apr 2023) while my FMGC page shows a much older ACTIVATE NAV DATA BASE dated 12AUG21-08AUG2021. I have made sure my Simbrief username is correct in the settings of course.
What do I do next ? Fenix website shows a link to Navigraph website to use an app called Navigraph Hub but it seems to be for subscribers of Navigraph only.
Can I do an Init Request at all without a subscription to Navigraph ?
I strongly suggest that you subscribe to Navigraph. It very reasonably priced and adds a great deal of functionality to the sim (full access to charts being a major feature). Hang in there with learning the A320. I spent a couple of years on the PMDG 737’s before getting the Fenix. It was a pretty steep learning curve due to both the lack of documentation provided and the fact that the Airbus way of doing things is completely different than Boeings. Lots of good resources on this forum (I gave up on the Discord page ages ago).
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I second that. I was hesitant on navigraph because of the cost but that was only until I subscribed and could see what you get. It’s a good value service with excellent apps and heaps of integrations. It used to be just essential for airliner flying but it provides so much for GA these days that I’d keep it even if I wasn’t flying airliners.
They should have a manual explaining the Fenix features, but I think they have? I personally don’t think that Fenix should be in the business of documenting how an A320 works or how to use one, any more than my car manufacturer should be in the business of teaching me how to drive.
I like learning by reading but really the best way to learn this stuff is to watch one of the excellent tutorials on YouTube. I strongly recommend A330driver who has a complete A320 tutorial playlist. He is excellent at producing well-paced content that goes into excellent detail in an organised way. It really is the way to go for learning this plane.
Yes I have started watching youtube videos (those from 320 Sim Pilot, another fine one) but I wasn’t clear on my earlier question, hence why I was asking here.
I understand that you strongly recommend a Navigraph subscription. Noted. I am considering it. In the meantime, I still would like to know if this INIT REQUEST is supposed to work without one. If the answer is no, this is fine. I just would like to understand, and learn, what it is I can and cannot do with this aircraft. If it should work and I’m just doing something wrong, I would like to understand what exactly.
It definitely will work, and simbrief is completely free to use. But with the old navdata any time you hit a waypoint that has been removed or replaced it will break. The less consistent the data the more likely this is.
Try planning a few different dep arrs to find something that works.
Waypoints and procedures change often. I was flying to Perth when the last AIRAC update hit and the approaches and waypoints all changed. Not just new versions but totally different. The chart I had looked at earlier in the flight had literally vanished from the EFB and all of the apps while I was in the virtual sky! I hope that never happens to real flights!
My car came with 473 pages long owner’s manual. It does not teach you how to drive but explains every single switch and feature you can find in the car. BAe 146 from Just Flight comes with 300 pages manual, A2A included 58 pages long manual for their relatively simple Comanche 250, Black Square added 107 pages long manual to their King Air. Even PMDG created a simple tutorial for B737 explaining how to fly the plane. I believe it’s reasonable to expect something similar from Fenix.
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@RagingWombat839
Alright, thanks mate appreciate the response, very clear.
In this case no prob I can also just plug-in my flightplan manually if it breaks (until I decide to get a Navigraph subscription). Not ideal of course.
(what’s strange is that I don’t have this problem with FBW and InBuild’s A320, but I guess each airplane will work differently)
They use MSFS navdata provided by Navblue, which is up to date. It was updated a few days ago. Fenix only works with Navigraph AIRAC, which I don’t get. MSFS updates AIRAC regularly, why not use it? Personally, I have Navigraph subscription but many people don’t.
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The Fenix nav database is a completely different format than the default MSFS nav data. It is closer to how a real airliner nav database would be coded than the system the default database uses. That probably comes from its implementation of ProSim. There is no way the Fenix could ever be made compatible with the MSFS default nav data.
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I think that last statement is probably not true. The data needed is clearly available from the sim and it’s nearly always possible to convert data from one format to another. Would it be worth Fenix spending time to do this? Almost certainly not I think. Either their users are already using Navigraph, or they’ll soon be using navigraph anyway. 
“of course”? Hmm I guess that’s a personal opinion.
I can’t remember how long since I last used the uplink. I certainly did early on, but I don’t now. Once I learnt how easy it is to enter a flightplan using the MCDU, with or without airways, I’ve just always done it manually. Even a long flightplan can be entered in 2 minutes so it doesn’t save any time if you are boarding passengers etc. It’s more fun and you learn more about your route in the process.
Many airlines have uplink functions but not all, so it’s realistic either way.
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Ok thanks for this bit of - important - information. I understand better now.
The Fenix nav data is structured and stored in a completely different format than the format the sim uses by default. It is the same data, but structured very very differently. It would be like an instruction manual for assembling a piece of IKEA furniture written in Mandarin Chinese vs. the same manual written in English. Both lead to the same end result, but an English-only speaker would be unable to use the Chinese version.
It’s no different in real world aviation. A nav database designed for an Airbus is completely incompatible with the FMS in a Boeing and vice versa. A company like Jeppesen will supply databases in the specific format required by a specific aircraft model. It’s the same with Navigraph and the dozens of 3rd party add-on aircraft models they support
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Nor reading them manuals make them pilots.
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reading manuals doesn’t make you a pilot anyway
I don’t really need educating on data formats nor APIs, but your example is fine, and just like a person can translate Chinese to English it’s possible to write code to convert between formats rendering your prior statement false.
The TDS GTN 750 developers spent a lot of time writing a convertor/adaptor so that they could plug navigraph data into the garmin trainer which has its own incompatible format, and they’ve succeeded.
Anyway this is going off topic and is practically irrelevant anyway since I don’t see any incentive for Fenix to put such effort in. Even PMDG chose not to expend that effort even with their xbox release, and they’ve got xbox customers clamouring for it.
Guys, I cannot hear my pilots’ callouts “80kt, V1, rotate”.
Anything I need to do I haven’t figure out ? In fact I can’t hear anything from my pilots like their own “welcome aboard” announcement, but perhaps these haven’t been modelled ?
(I’m now sorted with the cabin announcements thanks to @mhron above)
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