rd Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Total posts: 3549 Location: COMFORTABLY NUMB, in U.S.A. *** KOFF *** Age: 51 Gender: Male
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This tutorial has been written not to make you experts in making flight plans, but more to give you an insight as to what can be achieved by making your own flight plans and importing them into FS9. I have chosen just to concentrate on FS9 as most users now seem to be changing over to it and because it has a couple of features associated with flight plans that FS2002 did not have. I must apologise now as this is a bit of a long and at times confusing subject, it tends to come over as rather boring, but writing flight plans for your own local airport can make FS seem even more real.
The new features in FS9 associated with flight plans are the TNG or Touch “N” Go and the ability to import more than one traffic.bgl file into FS9. I will discuss the merits of both in the tutorial. So let us have a look a simple flight plan and the components that are need to make one work: -
We will use Traffic Tools V2.2 by Lee Swordy to test our flight plans and compile our simple flight plans and also to give us error reporting. If you do not have Traffic Tools installed, please do so now. You can find the program on www.SurClaro.com or http://www.surclaro.com/download.php?op=getit&lid=13820 (this is a direct download of Ttools).
So what are the components that are needed to make our flight plan, first we have to make or obtain three .TXT files called Flightplans-test.txt, Aircraft-test.txt and Airports -test.txt.
First make your Flightplans-test.txt and Aircraft-test.txt files. These are an empty text files made using WORDPAD or NOTEPAD, the other one will be obtained using Traffic Tools. The TXT files should be saved in the Traffic Tools folder. I will explain the purpose of each file as we use them. Note that all the files have “-test” in their names. As mentioned earlier, FS9 will support multiple Traffic.bgl files, these are the files made when we run Traffic Tools to compile our work into a traffic.bgl file. By Adding the”-test” to our files when the files are compiled the resulting file will be called Traffic-test.bgl
So let’s make our Airports.txt files, just follow the steps below to obtain them
1. Find your Traffic Tools folder and click on the Collect Airports icon
2. A .TXT file named Airports_FS2004 will be made (It can take several minutes to make this file)
3. Rename this file to Airports-test.txt
If you install a new piece of scenery that contains new airfields that you wish to include in your flight plans then a new airports_FS2004.txt file will have to be made. Your Airports-test.txt file contains all the information about all the airfields contained within FS9. You can only use these airfields in your flight plans. The data held in the Airports-test.txt looks like the example below for New York John F Kennedy airport.
KJFK,N40* 37.69',W73* 46.72',13
Four pieces of information for all the 23700+ airports in FS9 are in the file. The ICAO four character code, the Latitude and Longitude, and the Elevation for the airport. Usually you do not need to edit this file.
That’s the easy bit out of the way.
So let’s deal with the second easiest bit, the Aircraft-test.txt file. What does this file do? Well it contains all the details of the aircraft we use with our flight plans and must be accurate. The list contains 3 pieces of information for each aircraft you want to use, it’s “AC# is the aircraft identification number, it’s cruising speed and it’s name.
A typical aircraft.txt entry looks something like this
AC#1, 200,"Beech Baron 58"
Notice that a comma “,” separates each component of the entry, and that the aircraft name is contained in “quote” marks.
We will use the aircraft data above as everyone should have this aircraft installed as it is a default FS2004 aircraft and good enough for our purposes.
So open the Aircraft-test.txt document in WORDPAD or NOTEPAD, type in the AC#1 data into it and save.
The AC# can be anything of your choice up to I believe AC#64000, but I don’t think we will have that many!! I always start at 1, even with multiple traffic.bgl files there is no need to number your aircraft so that no conflicts occur.
One very important point is the aircraft name, this MUST match exactly the entry in the aircraft.cfg for that aircraft type, the best way to make sure it does is to open the aircraft.cfg and copy the “title=” entry and paste this into your aircraft.txt and don’t forget the “quotes”. Well that’s two out of three files made.
Onto the most difficult part of making flight plans the flightplans-test.txt. Let’s have a look at a typical flight plan line and break down the different parts. This flight plan is for two flights, one from EGKK to EGSS leaving at 08:00 GMT, and the other from EGSS to EGKK at 20:00. These are daily flights. Notice that there are 2 flights, you can NOT have normal flight plans with just one flight or leg.
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,24hr,IFR, 08:00:00,00:00:00,070,F,0001,EGSS,20:00:00,00:00:00,080,F,0002,EGKK
Again all the component parts are separated by commas “,”
AC#1
This is the aircraft from our Aircraft-test.txt that we made.
GBJWG
The registration of the aircraft (no more than 7 digits). This is the registration used by FS9 ATC
89%
The percentage position of the traffic slider where this aircraft will appear.
24hr
The period covered by our flight plan, I will discuss this more later.
IFR
Is the flight IFR or VFR
08:00:00
The departure time from EGKK
00:00:00
The arrival time at EGSS, this is calculated by traffic tools.
070
The cruise altitude for the flight
F
“F” here signifies the aircraft will use a flight number “R” means it will use it’s registration.
0001
Flight number.
EGSS
In our 2 flight, flight plan this is the morning flight destination, and the afternoon return flight departure point.
20:00:00
The departure time from EGSS
00:00:00
The arrival time at EGKK, this is calculated by traffic tools.
080
The cruise altitude for the flight
F
“F” here signifies the aircraft will use a flight number “R” means it will use it’s registration.
0002
Flight number.
EGKK
In our 2 flight, flight plan this is the morning flight departure point, and the afternoon return flight destination.
The first thing you should notice is that the first departure airport is in fact the last entry in the flight plan, this applies to ALL flight plans and can cause some confusion when writing long involved plans. Copy this flight plan into your flightplans-test.txt file. Make sure you have your airports-test.txt, aircraft-test.txt and flightplans-test.txt in the Traffic Tools folder, start the Traffic Tools program, highlight your three files and click the compile button, If you have no errors the flight plan should compile quite quickly.
Most errors are typo errors, and will be shown up by traffic tools, check thru your work and make sure it is accurate.
If you now start FS9 you should have a daily Baron flight between EGKK and EGSS. If the flight is not in view check an hour either side to allow for Daylight Saving Time. Microsoft do not seem to be very good at the way the make Flight Simulator tell time. It seems that FSUIPC, either registered of unregistered makes a difference to the timings within Flight Simulator 9, why or how it does I don’t know !!
One point that you should check is that the airports you wish to fly from and to have parking slots for the aircraft to use and that the airport has an ATC frequency assigned to it. Use AFCAD2 by Lee Swordy to check this out. I will not write a tutorial for AFCAD2 as Lee’s help files are a hundred times better than anything I can write.
In the flightplan-test.txt we have made, we have only got 2 flights, but what if we want more flight plans on the same day? Say every 4 hours between EGKK and EGSS. Well we would have to do the following, change the Period covered by our flight plan from 24 hr to 4hr, and the departure time to reflect the first time of departure from EGKK and the first return departure time from EGSS. The total elapsed time for these flights and time on the ground at both airports must not exceed 4hrs. It is very important that you get ALL your flights into the rotation time allowed,, even by being over by 1 sec and the whole flight plan for that aircraft might not work.So our flight plan might now look like this: -
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,4hr,IFR, 02:00:00,00:00:00,070,F,0001,EGSS,04:00:00,00:00:00,080,F,0002,EGKK
So now our aircraft will leave at the following times
EGKK
EGSS
02:00
04:00
06:00
08:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
16:00
18:00
20:00
22:00
00:00
So with one line of code we have now produced 12 separate flights. This method of producing flight plans is useful if you want to have regular flights between two places everyday. Make sure that your flight times use the earliest departure time from your departure airport, in this case 02:00:00. So far we have just used 2 airports in our plans but we can have more, the only two rules to obey are:-
1. Total time of our flights fits in to the rotation time
2. Our first departure airport and our last arrival airport are the same.
A three leg flight plan might look something like this
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,6hr,IFR, 02:00:00,00:00:00,070,F,0001,EGSS,03:45:00,00:00:00,080,F,0002,EGBB, 06:00:00,00:00:00,080,F,0003,EGKK
Now we have a “round robin” flight starting at EGKK to EGSS then to EGBB then returning back to EGKK, as we have changed the rotation time too, we will now get flights leaving at the following times
From EGKK
From EGSS
From EGBB
02:00
03:45
06:00
08:00
09:45
12:00
14:00
15:45
18:00
20:00
21:45
00:00
The only limit to the number of flights is to if they will all fit into the rotation time.
This method does have limitations, it is fine where the flight times out and back plus the turn round times is less than 24Hrs. Where the turn round time and flight times exceed 24 hours we have to move to the weekly flight plan. This is where we schedule our aircraft to fly different sectors for the whole week.
Let’s have a look at an example from the UT flight plans.
AC#316,LH340,27%,WEEK,IFR,0/00:14:46,0/03:48:52,310,F,0589,EDDF,0/07:48:49,0/17:27:08,310,F,0438,
KDFW,0/20:24:19,1/06:02:38,330,F,0439,EDDF,1/07:49:41,1/17:26:47,310,F,0438,KDFW,1/20:23:58,2/06:02:17,290,F,0439,
EDDF,2/07:49:20,2/17:27:39,310,F,0438,KDFW,2/20:24:51,3/06:01:56,330,F,0439,EDDF,3/07:48:59,3/17:27:18,310,F,0438,
KDFW,3/20:24:30,4/06:02:49,330,F,0439,EDDF,4/07:49:52,4/17:26:57,310,F,0438,KDFW,4/20:24:08,5/06:02:28,290,F,0439,
EDDF,5/07:49:31,5/17:27:50,310,F,0438,KDFW,5/20:23:47,6/06:02:07,330,F,0439,EDDF,6/08:34:41,6/12:08:47,330,F,0588,
HECA,6/13:59:32,6/16:05:02,290,F,0588,HSSS,6/20:24:40,6/22:30:11,310,F,0589,HECA
Please note that for clarity I have made this plan spread over six lines but when writing a flight plan you must make each plan on one line of code!!
Notice that we are using the word WEEK instead of an hour value
And that the time codes now have an extra part, in our 2 flight, flight plan the code was HH:MM:SS using GMT. All times in flight plans are GMT, in the WEEK flight plans we add the day like this D/HH:MM:SS where Sunday is 0, Monday is 1, Tuesday is 2, ect.
So let’s break this flight plan down to it’s flights.
The first departure airport is the very last entry, in this case HECA Cairo Airport and work from there .
Raw Flight Plan Data
What It Means
0/00:14:46,0/03:48:52,310,F,0589,EDDF
HECA to EDDF depart Sunday 00:14:46 arrive Sunday 03:48:52, flight level 310, flight number 589
0/07:48:49,0/17:27:08,310,F,0438,KDFW
EDDF to KDFW depart Sunday 07:48:49 arrive Sunday17:27:08, flight level 310, flight number 438
0/20:24:19,1/06:02:38,330,F,0439,EDDF
KDFW to EDDF depart Sunday 20:24:19 arrive Monday 06:02:38, flight level 330, flight number 439
And so on, for the 16 flights over the 7-day period. The last flight of the seven day period is
HSSS to HECA depart Saturday 20:24:40 arrive HECA 22:30:11
Notice the departure point for the first flight and the arrival point of the last flight of the flight plan are the same. It does not matter how many legs in your flight you must ALWAYS have them the same.
At the beginning I stated that a new code had appeared in FS9 called TNG or Touch “N” Go, as the name suggests this will allow aircraft to be programmed to carry out touch and go circuits. It has 2 modes, if the aircraft is flying under an IFR flight plan then it will overshoot and carry out an IFR vectored flight back to the approach until it’s time of arrival passes after which it will land. In VFR flights the aircraft will carry out touch and go circuits until it’s time of arrival passes, again landing after that. The VFR mode does not work very well with heavy jets as the aircraft have to stop on the runway then take off again during the touch and go, with aircraft larger than large GA this tends to lead to the aircraft running out of runway before taking off again.
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,24hr,IFR, 08:00:00,TNG10:00:00,070,F,0001,EGSS,12:00:00,TNG14:00:00,080,F,0002,EGSS
By adding the TNG switch in front of the arrival time our aircraft will now carry out Touch and Go circuits for 2 hours starting at 08:00:00 and 12:00 everyday at EGSS, notice that all the flights are carried out at EGSS.
If you wish you can have an aircraft fly from one airfield to another, carry out Touch and Go circuits and then return to it’s home airport without actually stopping at the second airport. This is achieved by making the arrival time at the 2nd airport and the departure time at the 2nd airport have less than 20 minutes between them. This time is a limit built in by Microsoft. So a flight plan could look like this
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,24hr,IFR, 08:00:00,TNG10:29:00,070,F,0001,EGGW,10:30:00,TNG11:00:00,080,F,0002,EGSS
In this case the aircraft would take off from EGSS at 08:00 fly to EGGW then carry out Touch and Go Circuits until 10:29 then return to it’s home airport and if any time remained would do touch and go’s until it’s arrival time of 11:00 had passed, then it would land.
The last and most confusing symbol is the @ sign, this is placed in front of the arrival time to force an aircraft to arrive at an airport at a fixed time. Most of the flight plans from MRAI, flightsim.com and acsim.com seem to use it as standard.
AC#1,GBJWG,89%,24hr,IFR, 08:00:00,@08:39:00,070,F,0001,EGSS,20:00:00,@20:39:00,080,F,0002,EGKK
Well I hope that’s turned the light on for those of you that want to attempt your own flight plans. Writing flight plans is an involved process and takes a bit off time to get your head around them. So just remember these basic rules and your flight plans will work.
1. ALL flight plans are written using GMT timings.
2. Try to start with the earliest flight first, if using WEEK timing start with the earliest flight on a Sunday.
3. When NOT using the TNG switch flight plans must have at least 2 legs
4. The first departure airport and the last arrival airport MUST be the same.
5. Try to leave a minimum of 40 minutes between your arrival time and the next departure. If you don’t leave enough time flights might not appear.
6. The departure and arrival airports MUST have parking spaces for the aircraft.
7. At least ONE ATC frequency must be assigned to the airports.
And of course just remember the oldest rule in computing when you first attempt flight plans
KISS= Keep It Simple Stupid
Believe me it works.
2nd oldest rule, BACK UP your work! Nothing worse than to loose it all!
3rd oldest rule, don’t blame me for sleepless nights!
Have fun!!
RD
Last edited by rd on Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:13 am; edited 2 times in total |
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