Lesson 6: VFR Flight
Overview:
It is now time to plan, file and fly a VFR flight.
For this lesson we will be departing from Shannon Airport (EINN) and our arrival will be Connemara (EICA). There will be no ATC coverage for this flight as all communication will be on the UNICOM frequency 122.800.
This lesson is broken down into 4 parts – which each part having some additional sections.
Part 1 – Planning our flight
Part 2 – Filing our Flight Plan
Part 3 – The Flight
Part 4 – Review
Part 1 – Planning our flight
In this section we will be using:
• Navigraph, Skyvector and some IAA charts to plan the location and route (including airspace)
• Ventusky for weather information and forecasts
• Volanta for traffic and ATC coverage
We plan our flight from Shannon to Connemara. We need to check for any restrictions with regards to airspace, altitudes, danger areas, points of interest, visual reference points, other airports.
We need to work out roughly how long the flight will take – based on weather information, routing and possible issues if we have an aircraft failure, in air emergency, weather impact.
The flight duration will also impact on our fuel planning.
Part 2 – Filing our Flight Plan
In this section we will be using:
• VATSIM & SimBrief to complete and file our flight plans
Once our route is planned, we need to create a flight plan and file it on the network. Note – we will not be “connected” to the VATSIM network for this lesson – but we can still file a plan to get used to the different settings.
Part 3 – The Flight
In this section we will focus on the flying, navigation, and ATC communication.
We start off on the ground at Shannon (EINN) and after checking our aircraft for our pre-flight inspection, confirming what we are going to do (direction of flight after takeoff) we ready ourselves for departure
Part 4 – Review
In this section we will be using:
• Volanta for to review our flight
Reviewing historical data of your flight is important. It will help you focus on any areas you might need to work on. Its not just about landing rates (but c’mon – we all love butter), seeing how well you flew in terms of speed, heading and altitude really help with future flights.
Objective:
To communicate and monitor information to other aircraft using UNICOM 122.800 and maintain control of our aircraft.
This will all be deployed using our Discord Voice Channels.
Important
Depending on the number of pilots - we may use multiple MSFS Servers. For example - the default multiplayer server will be SE Asia.
I have created additional Voice Channels to allow for:
(A) = SE Asia
(B) = West USA
(C ) = East USA
A. UNICOM 122.800 SE Asia
B. UNICOM 122.800 West USA
C. UNICOM 122.800 East USA
This is all about learning together. Bring a pen and notebook and if you have any questions you can pop them into the atc-text channel on discord