This article is designed to
help new online pilots plan their flight and submit an online plan. As with the general theme of the FSNewbies,
we will be talking about online flying in the Australian / New Zealand
Airspace. It should be noted that these
comments refer specifically to online flying and none of these comments should
be considered instruction in real world flying or flight planning. Those concepts are far more complex than the
scope of this article allows and this article has significantly simplified the
subject for ease of understanding.
Flight online, and the
provision of Air Traffic Control, is conducted as close to real life as is
possible in a simulated environment.
People who perform the rolls of Air Traffic Control are volunteers who
have studied for the positions they hold.
All pilots should try to conduct themselves professionally online as
pilots do in the real world.
To assist this, it is
strongly recommended that you develop skills in flying and navigating your
aircraft before coming online. There are
many off-line flights and lessons within Flight Simulator that you can use to
develop these skills.
At the basic level, we
suggest you should be able to:
- Hand fly your aircraft if required. Start with simple single engine prop
aircraft like the C172 and C182, rather than jumping straight into a twin
engine rocket that you’ve never flown before. If you can’t hand fly and land your
aircraft, then you should not fly it online. Keep practicing.
- Fly a basic circuit and know what the legs of a
circuit are (Upwind, Crosswind, Downwind, Base and Final)
- Fly an assigned heading and maintain an assigned
altitude.
- Climb and Descend as required and at a
consistent rate.
- Maintain appropriate speed control over your
aircraft in all phases of your flight.
Remember, there is an airspeed limit of 250 knots below 10,000 feet
in Australia and most aircraft touch down at less than 150
knots. You should also remember not
to operate your aircraft at multiple times speed (2x, 4x, etc) without ATC
approval, as you will appear on ATC screens as operating at an abnormally
high speed in relation to all the other aircraft on line.
Flight Planning:
Flight planning is an
important part of your online flying. It
involves selecting a route to fly, submitting that route to ATC, plotting that
route on a chart or entering it into a Flight Management Computer so that you
can correctly fly it.
In the real world there are
two types of flight types. Visual flights
(VFR) generally fly with reference to a compass, map and what they see on the
ground. Instrument flights (IFR) fly
with reference to electronic navigation systems such as GPS systems, NDBs,
VORs, DMEs. Most people fly IFR flights
online, probably because IFR flights receive more ATC services than VFR
flights. That being said, VFR flights
are encouraged online and are a great way to start your online flying.
In the sky, instrument pilots
generally fly along invisible airways. They are like roads on the ground and help define the fastest route
between points. As with roads on the
ground, some roads are two way and some roads are one way.
This is a (really poor)
image of part of a real world en-route chart (it is about 10 years old). Current versions of this type of chart
available for purchase from AirServices Australia’s online store at
http://www.airservices.gov.au/store/
The chart shows airways
between Melbourne and Adelaide. Airways are
lines that join various navigation points.
Those points can be GPS waypoints, land based NDB or VOR beacons or
airports. Each airway is given a label,
eg H44, H146, Y118 as well as bearings, distances and lowest safe altitudes on
those airways. GPS Waypoints are given
five letter identifiers. An example of a
Waypoint on the H44 airway from Sydney to Adelaide is MAXEM.
Understanding the concepts
of GPS Waypoints and Airways will help you in planning your online flight.
In the real world, flights to
and from many of the larger airports are conducted along preferred routes. These routes are listed in AirServices
Australia’s En-Route Supplement (ERSA) and are designed to
assist a safe and coordinated flow of air traffic around the country.
To get to ERSA:
- Agree to the copyright message
- Click on the link to ERSA
- Click on Flight Planning Requirements
Pilots flying online around
Australia use similar preferred routes. They can be easily obtained from the VATPAC pilot
assist site.
http://www.vatpac.org/assist/?pg=pilotassist
Let’s go through an example
of setting up a flight plan for an online flight from
Melbourne to Sydney.
- Open the Pilot Assist site on the VATPAC site:
http://www.vatpac.org/assist/?pg=pilotassist
- Select Melbourne from the Departure List and Sydney from the Arrival List. (Alternatively you can use the ICAO
codes for the airports which are all listed in ERSA. The ICAO codes for this flight are YMML
and YSSY)
- Click Find Routes
You will see that two routes
have come up, with select buttons next to them.
One of them is a prop route (for prop aircraft) the other doesn’t have
an aircraft type, is for normally for jets.
Click the select button next to the jet route.
- In the Flight Planning pane (second down from
the left) fill in the information with your name, aircraft call sign, etc
and click “Create Flight Card”.
Remember that call signs should be letters and numbers only. Do not include spaces, hyphens or any
other non-alphanumeric characters.
- Click “Create Flight Card”
So here is what you end up with:
Time for some explanation of
what you are looking at:
This is the preferred flight
plan route and it is written in the format that a real pilot would submit
it. It looks complex but it is
reasonably simple to understand. To put
this plan into words it saying the plan is to track direct from
Melbourne along airway H129 to waypoint DOSEL. From DOSEL join
airway Y59 direct to Sydney.
Let’s look at H129 and
Y59. You’ll see on the right side of the
screen the route details.
This lists all of the
waypoints along the route planned route
DCT ML H129 DOSEL Y59 SY DCT
Because we know that we
leave H129 at DOSEL, we know that the part of that airway that we will be
travelling on goes directly from Melbourne to DOSEL (there are no waypoints listed in
between). At DOSEL we join airway
Y59. This airway flies over the
following waypoints: DOSEL, EBONY, ARRAN, NONUP, CULIN,
TARAL, RIVET then directly to Sydney. So Y59 is a
simplified way of stating that the aircraft plans to fly over all these waypoints. When flying along your flight plan, you will
be expected to fly over these waypoints.
These waypoints can normally
be found in the Flight Sim GPS system or independent flight management computer
systems.
Altitudes:
So, we know what information
needs to be submitted and once it is submitted, what route we have to fly. One further thing needs to be discussed about
flight planning, and that is altitude planning.
There are some simple concepts that need to be remembered when deciding
what altitude to fly at.
The first thing is altitude
planning requirements, dependent on which direction your cruise tracks. Sounds complex but is simple.
If your cruise tracks
generally between 000° and 179° you should plan to fly odd thousands of feet in
altitude for IFR (ie 3000, 5000, 7000… FL310, FL330, FL350, FL390, FL410) and
should plan to fly odd thousands of feet + 500 for VFR (ie 3500, 5500, 7500,
FL155, etc)
If your cruise tracks
generally between 180° and 359° you should plan to fly even thousands of feet
in altitude for IFR (ie 4000, 6000, 8000… FL320, FL340, FL360, FL400, FL420)
and should plan to fly even thousands of feet + 500 for VFR (ie 4500, 6500,
8500,… FL165, etc)
The second thing to consider
with regard to altitude planning is can I reach my planned altitude in the
distance of the flight? Online we see
many instances of people who plan to fly a jet from
Canberra to Sydney at FL370, only to find they can’t make the altitude
in that distance. So plan an altitude
that is appropriate to the distance and the aircraft that you are flying.
Submitting the plan:
There are a couple of ways
to submit your plan. You can pre-file it
straight from the VATPAC pilotassist website or you can submit it in Squawkbox. Pre-filing is the simplest way of submitting
a flight plan.
VATPAC PilotAssist website:
Back to where we were, in
the Flight Planning pane on the left side of the screen, click “File with
VATSIM”.
This will take you to the
VATSIM site.
Much of the form has been
filled out for you. You need to enter
your VATSIM user id and password to be able to submit this form.
Also, if you are new to online
flying you may not have come across the concept of SIDs and STARs. These are departure and arrival procedures at
many of the larger airports. They are
beyond the scope of this article and there is another article which covers
them. If you are not sure what SIDs and
STARs are or not comfortable that you can fly them correctly, add the words NO
SIDS / NO STARS into the comment section.
This will ensure that ATC gives you radar vectors from the airport to
the first waypoint on your plan and from your last waypoint to the landing
runway.
Once all this is done click
“File Flight Plan” and you are finished.
The flight plan is submitted and will stay active for two hours.
Flight plan submission
through Squawkbox:
The FSNewbies site contains
an article explaining how to get online with Squawkbox. These comments should be read in conjunction
with that article.
In the PilotAssist Website
there is one more thing to do. Click on
the button “Export to SB3/FSInn”. Save
the file to your hard drive
Once you’ve connected to the
VATSIM network, click the Start button in Squawkbox and select “Flight
Plan”.
Click “Load” and select the
flight plan you have just saved. The
saved plan will fill all the details so all you need to do is check it for
accuracy and hit “Send Flight Plan”.
Submitted plans can take anything from a few seconds to a couple of
minutes to be received by ATC.
In Conclusion:
Well, that’s it. This is obviously a very over simplified
concept of flight planing online, with no consideration being given to other
factors like en-route winds and temperature, which are beyond the scope of this
article. Practice some of these flights
off line to get a feel for where they travel and how to set them up.
