Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
If you’ve been following my previous X-Plane tutorials, then you should have an awesome looking X-Plane with real-time tracking and all sorts of whizz-bang effects.
But what about a flight plan?
Actually creating a flight plan is easy enough: the X-Plane Flight-Planner website: http://xplane.anzui.de:3000/flight-planner.
On the site (using the small ‘+’ icon), you can show/hide various overlays such as routes, fixes, airports, etc. You can also change the map type from roads to satellite, or even use the Openstreet map.
The blue (and pale blue) circles with what looks like an ‘X’ are airports, while the blue circles with a white ‘H’ are heliports. The white triangles are fixes. You can click any of them to get a popup with info. Airports will give you info such as radio frequencies and their name (eg: EGPF), while the fixes will just have a name (eg: GOW12).
Let’s say I’m flying out of Glasgow airport and ultimately want to land at Edinburgh, but want to go via a fix. In other words: I don’t want to just go in a straight line from A to B.
First, I click Glasgow airport, and click the link that says ‘add as waypoint’:
As you can see, it’s added Glasgow (EGPF) to the column on the right. Next, I click Edinburgh, and do the same: As you can see, it’s a bit bland. Let’s add a fix. Click a white triangle and add it too. Oops! It’s OK. I purposely entered the middle point last to show that you can move your waypoints around. Drag the fix (the red box) on the right-hand column up to become the middle point. That’s better. You can click the EDIT button at the top right to enter information such as aircraft, fuel, etc. But let’s keep it simple for now.
NOTE: If you’re using a plane with a flight management computer (FMC) that allows importing of flight plans, then you can use the EDIT button to export your flight plan as a .FMC file.
So, none of that was done in X-Plane. Now what? Well, time to load up X-Plane, and hop inside your favourite plane, and click the Garmin GPS. It should open in a new window within X-Plane:
Unfortunately, the Garmin/X-Plane 530 is a bit awkward to use since it has no keys. Everything has to be done using the two revolving dials on either bottom side of it. Like radio buttons, there’s a larger outer dial, and a smaller inner dial. Each also has a push button in the middle.
First, press CDI and make sure VLOC becomes GPS. I prefer GPS over VLOC. Now, press FPL. As it says, this is your active flight plan. At the moment it’s empty. But, press the middle of the right dial, then click the inner smaller dial to begin entering your starting point. After the first letter, click the larger dial to enter the next letter, and so on. In my case I’m entering EGPF. When entered, press ENT.
ACCEPT? Press ENT to accept.
Now you have your starting point in. Do the same thing for the fix and the destination.
Pretty fiddly, huh? Well, fear not, it’s almost done, and, once it’s entered, you’ll have the pleasure of enjoying auto-pilot.
Press FPL again, and you'll go to the radar/map mode. You may need to use the up/down button at the top-right to zoom in/out, but you should see that you’re at your starting airport with a line drawn to the fix, then to your destination.
So, with your flight plan in the GPS, it’s time to fire up your bird, and enable the autopilot, and enjoy the view!
There’s still a lot more that the Garmin 530 can do. You can program it for a specific approach where it’ll pretty much line you up and all you need to do is slow down, go into approach mode, and get your wheels on the tarmac.