FS Flight Tracker V3.1.0
By Richard Wilson (11 September 2002)
ou sit down and begin your preflight planning for your next
flight. If you fly for a virtual airline as I do, this often means having
a scrap piece of paper at your side for jotting down flight information. I
can't even begin to tell you how many times I shut down Flight Simulator without
remembering to check the fuel on board after arrival. After all, there are
no flight log utilities that I have found to assist virtual pilots with these
tedious tasks. Until now.
About a month ago, I stumbled across a news posting about the release of FS Flight Tracker by JordSoft. The news release described FS Flight Tracker as a utility to automatically record flight time and fuel information. I downloaded the evaluation version and much to my surprise it was even more than I had hoped for. I did run into a few minor problems with the program, but the support that I received from JordSoft was beyond exceptional. They responded to my emails usually the same day that I would send them. I am running their latest version now, V3.1.0, and I have not experienced a single problem.
What exactly is FS Flight Tracker? This is what I was asking when I initially saw the news release. Fortunately for you, I am now an avid user and can tell you all about it. It is simply the most useful utility that I have seen for virtual pilots in a long time. FS Flight Tracker links to Flight Simulator 2000/2002 using Pete Dowson's FSUIPC module. You will need to have this module installed in the Modules folder of Flight Simulator before you can use FS Flight Tracker. JordSoft does include it with the software if you do not already have it.
FS Flight Tracker does automatically record flight times and fuel information. In fact, it does much more. The screen that records information from Flight Simulator is called the ACARS screen. ACARS is a system used to report flight information in real world aviation. As soon as the ACARS screen is turned on, your aircraft tail number, aircraft type, airline flight number and departure airport appear on the screen. Some of the features are not available for FS2000. After releasing the parking brake, the OUT time and fuel on board appear. As you would guess, the OFF time appears once you become airborne. Upon arrival at your destination, the reverse is true. When you touch down the ON time appears. Setting the parking brake at the gate triggers the IN time and fuel on board to appear. FS Flight Tracker then calculates your flight time in tenths as done in real world aviation as well as hours and minutes. The fuel burn is automatically calculated as well.
Not only did FS Flight Tracker provide all of the information that I would normally report to my virtual airline, but it did it automatically. Basically you set it and forget it. After arriving at your destination, the information is there. This beats jotting down time and fuel information during the flight and performing manual calculations by far.
It gets even better. FS Flight Tracker has a Flight Log screen as well. At the completion of your flight you can opt to add it to the log. One click of the mouse later and the entry is saved in the Flight Log. You may make manual entries to the log as well. The aircraft type column in the log provides a drop down list of your FS aircraft. The Origin and Destination columns provide a drop down list of ICAO airport codes and names. Another nice feature is that you may use multiple flight logs. I fly for a couple of virtual airlines and I like to keep separate logs for each.
Finally, there is a screen that allows you to view your total hours by aircraft type. I find this a rather interesting feature since I have not found any other logging utility that can do it. How else would I know how many hours I have in the A320?
You may be wondering if FS Flight Tracker reports fuel in pounds, gallons or kilograms. FS Flight Tracker allows you to decide. It is extremely user friendly and offers options for reporting time and fuel. Time may be reported in local format or Zulu which is also known as UTC and GMT. You may even change the color of the screens. This is rather fortunate as I did not find its default colors to my liking.
Overall, I think that FS Flight Tracker would make an excellent addition to anyone's add-on arsenal. I would even go so far as to say that VA pilots would be crazy not to take advantage of something like this. It has increased my enjoyment of our hobby by allowing me more time to fly. If you use another flight log then I would have to say that this product is different enough that it would complement it nicely. It's offered for what I feel is a modest price.
Is there anything that I didn't like about it? Yes, I wish that it had an option to start it from within Flight Simulator. Other than that, I find it a pleasure to use. Actually, even this is not all that bad. I find that the <ALT><TAB> key combination to switch between applications in Windows works fairly well if you need to view FS Flight Tracker during flight. It can even run on a separate computer if you use WideFS.
Richard Wilson
richard_d_wilson2002@Yahoo.com
FS Flight Tracker
