Web sites

Patrick Ashley from Flight Simulator X World has informed me that his site - Flight Simulator X World - has undergone a major facelift:

If you’re a regular visitor to FSXW, you’ll notice our new look and logo! We needed to allow more room for more features and better menu management to allow for future growth; things were getting too crowded, and people were not aware of several features, notably, the File Upload feature, you’ll see in the menu now! Please, try to upload a file - i think you’ll find it painless! CAVEAT: The Forum is still in it’s previous form, but I am working to change it. Hope you enjoy the new look!

If you haven’t yet visited Patrick’s site, please take the time to look it over. There’s a lot of useful information over there.

This is a great article by Patrick Smith, an airline pilot, on the mistaken belief held by many that a pilot’s job is an easy one now that the cockpit is filled with automation.

Will pilots eventually be eliminated altogether? Perhaps someday, but here’s what I believe: Nobody alive on this planet today will ever take a seat on a pilotless commercial flight. Not because they can’t or shouldn’t, but because the task is too massive, too complex.

Maybe I sound arrogant or self-impressed — or scared, like the teletype operator, foolishly clinging to hope at the dawn of the computer age. But you’d be defensive too if a majority of people thought you were an overpaid slouch whose duties are better handled by a computer. If you’re skeptical, don’t take my word for it. Talk to somebody who flies for a living and who has endured an airline training program. Ride along on a simulator session and watch a crew battle engine fires, microbursts, single engine go-arounds and rapid decompressions over mountainous terrain. Take a look sometime inside a modern cockpit.

Be sure to read the rest of the article - it’s great stuff and there’s more to come.

Sim-Route has today opened it’s doors, providing a free flight planning tool for Flight Simulator users. I’ve given it a try and it’s pretty good, especially for this price!

Sim-route.com is a brand new website dedicated to the Microsoft Flight Simulator community. Sim-route provides FREE navigation data based on a real world database to aid flight planning. Our comprehensive search engine provides detailed route information from NAT’s, waypoints, frequencies, airport frequencies, departure - en-route - destination real world weather and much more at the click of a button! Our system enables you to print complete reports so that you have it handy whilst in flight! Don’t take our word for it, see for yourself!

I planned a route from EGNT to EGSS and it came back with the following detailed data:

Route Breakdown:

EGNT (0.0nm) -DCT-> GIRLI (20.0nm) -P18-> TILNI (30.0nm) -UP18->
GASKO (49.7nm) -P18-> ABKAT (54.3nm) -UP18-> POL (79.0nm) -A47->
POL11 (90.5nm) -A47-> EG179 (113.7nm) -A47-> LIC19 (121.0nm) -A47->
LIC (140.4nm) -A47-> DTY (181.0nm) -STAR-> EGSS (233.9nm)

Route Details:

ID      FREQ   TRK   DIST   Coords                       Name/Remarks
EGNT             0      0   N55°02′15.00″ W001°41′30.00″ NEWCASTLE
GIRLI          197     20   N54°42′41.00″ W001°48′11.00″ GIRLI
TILNI          196     10   N54°32′51.00″ W001°51′18.00″ TILNI
GASKO          196     20   N54°13′29.00″ W001°57′21.00″ GASKO
ABKAT          196      5   N54°08′53.00″ W001°58′47.00″ ABKAT
POL     112.1  196     25   N53°44′38.00″ W002°06′12.00″ POLE HILL
POL11          173     11   N53°33′28.00″ W002°01′49.00″ POL172011
EG179          173     23   N53°10′50.00″ W001°53′03.00″ EG531050N0015303W
LIC19          173      7   N53°03′45.00″ W001°50′21.00″ LIC352019
LIC     545    173     19   N52°44′48.00″ W001°43′10.00″ LICHFIELD
DTY     116.4  152     41   N52°10′49.00″ W001°06′50.00″ DAVENTRY
EGSS           114     53   N51°53′06.00″ E000°14′06.00″ STANSTED

Generated Flight Plan:

EGNT DCT GIRLI P18 TILNI UP18 GASKO P18 ABKAT UP18 POL A47 DTY STAR EGSS

Raw METAR:

Current Weather at: egnt

EGNT 121650Z 27014KT 9999 SCT025 18/09 Q1004

TAF:

EGNT 121634Z 130024 21008KT 9999 SCT030 PROB40 TEMPO 0916 6000 SHRA

Current Weather at: egss

EGSS 121650Z 25010KT 9999 FEW040 21/10 Q1006

TAF:

EGSS 121612Z 130024 24008KT 9999 FEW030

Pretty impressive stuff.

I’ve just been taking a look at Flight Site X. I’m not sure how long it’s been around, but it lets you search for “thousands of quality addons for Microsoft Flight Simulator”.

It’s got a nice clean interface and you can filter the results by Title, Flight Simulator version and add-on type. It doesn’t seem to give a count of the returned results, but just shows “Prev” and “Next” buttons to navigate through them.

I like the idea but haven’t done any exhaustive searching. Has anyone else got any experience of using the site?