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Hello fellow Flight Simmers, I’m back again this month, with
another idea on how to enjoy Flight Simulator: “Beat the
Clock!” What exactly is Beat the Clock do you ask? Well, let me
explain.Now that I have finally been able to successfully connect to the Vatsim Network (you’ll recall my article #5, I was still unable to after two years of trying) via their newly developed excellent interface, Squawkbox 3, I have been enjoying the commercial flying scene more than just the general aviation atmosphere that I used to love so much in Flight Simulator. It makes it so much more enjoyable to interact with a real human being rather than just AI controllers and aircraft on the other end of the computer. With Vatsim, you interact with real people and Vatsim ATC and real people flying other airplanes on their network, which makes longer commercial flights now more appealing to me than ever.
Okay. Time to play “Beat The Clock.” First of all, this can be done without Vatsim, though it does really make it more interesting. (For those of you who don’t have a Vatsim account, you can sign up for free at http://www.vatsim.net, and download Squawkbox 3).
Another step I take to make flying with Flight Simulator more realistic, when using default aircraft repainted to a specific airline, I go to a website http://www.airliners.net. You can perform searches for airlines and types of aircraft, and input the information into Microsoft Flight Simulator manually. For example, the flight that I am performing to for this article is from Providence, Rhode Island, using Flightscenery’s excellent KPVD 2005 package, to Washington Dulles International, under United Airlines. United Airlines flies in and out of KPVD on a regular basis, and also serves the metro Washington D.C. area on a regular basis, so the first task of making this a more realistic flight is, go to http://www.pvdairport.com/, look up flight info, and go to United. You will see Flight 8068 to Washington. What I did next was go to http://www.airliners.net and do a search for United Airlines Boeing 737-400 (which is what I am using a repaint of) and select Dulles International in the Airport menu. You will see a choice of United Airlines aircraft photos, some the old livery, some the new. I have new livery, so I chose N366UA for the registration number off of the 737 in one of the photos. I input that number in the registration field for the Microsoft Flight Simulator after selecting my plane, and low and behold, you see the registration on the fuselage since it is a default aircraft.
The E.T.A. from the Providence Airport home page shows approximately 50 minutes for arrival. Will we do better than that? In the nav log, after getting the route for IFR high altitude airways, Flight Simulator’s E.T.A. shows 43 minutes. Microsoft is always at least 90% of the time wrong though, wrong in longer flights. Let’s see how we make out.
Okay, for those of you using Vatsim, you know how to load up the flight plan. This is the flight plan enroute to KIAD for you guys. Those of you using Flight Simulator, it’s all ready set up for you.
The route is as follows:
KPVD to KIAD real world weather, flight level 210 KPVD, PVD, RAALE, NEWES, JFK, LAURN, RRB, LOBES, COPES, MXE, SALRI, MURPH, BINKS, KIADPlease note that this plan may slightly change from the clearance from Vatsim controllers - for I believe they use real route intersections so you may have to fly to another intersection and then be given or request proper heading to your route after you cross it at a certain altitude.
Okay, back to the flight. After take off, you will be directed to follow the GPS in Flight Simulator. There are usually no controllers online for KPVD but since the new scenery by Flightscenery, maybe there will be more often now.
Climb up to 10,000 feet, and then once reaching 10,000 feet proceed to 15,000 feet, and then climb to your maximum altitude of 20,000 feet. If you are flying by Microsoft’s ATC, you will be contacting the frequencies for the centers on a regular basis. If you are flying by Vatsim, you will be contacting the center that comes on line nearest to you when you enter their airspace. The closes center for me that particular day was KDY, which is short for Kennedy Center at JFK airport.
Once I was about at the MULRR intersection, I was advised to contact Washington Center, and then received direction for the rest of my flight, descend to 6000 feet, and then shortly after that, descend and maintain 4000 feet, and cleared to land runway 19 left ILS approach.
I was then cleared to taxi to the gate, pulled up to the parking spot, only to find another United Airlines jet just gates away from myself at Washington Dulles. I made it decent time with the flight - I managed to beat the flight time on the T.F, Greene Airport’s website by about 5 minutes the original time around - with the resetting for landing again, that added a couple, but all and all, I was happy the first time, “Beating the Clock.”
Inspired by my article? Email me. I love to hear from my readers.
Now, for some light legal stuff:
Flap’s Flap does not accept any responsibility for varied performance in systems. Please note my system specs and the display properties work fine with MY system. Set your display properties accordingly to your computer. Also, with any How To items that are given in these articles, please use at your own risk! I will hold no responsibility to any damage done to your system. And, as always, remember: Back up your files before changing them!
John J. Thuot II
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ragtopjohnny01@aol.com
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