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ust the other day I took a
little flight out of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for a quick jaunt south to
San Diego International-Lindbergh Field (SAN) in my Beech 1900D. After I was setup
on the San Diego Two departure, I left the room for a bit to get some drinks. When I
came back, I was completely lost. I had gotten off course somehow and drifted far
away. I was amazed--I couldn't believe I had gotten lost. Luckily, I was able
to find FSNavigator by Helge Schroeder on FlightSim.Com and decided it was the program for me. I
decided to check the program out on a trip from Los Angeles to Dallas.
The biggest (and most obvious) feature of this program is the moving map. It's very nice if you're like me and get lost every once in a while. The best part of this is that it's a plug-in for Flight Simulator 98, not an extra program. This means that all you do is hit a key (F9 by default), and it opens inside FS98. VOR's, NDB's, ILS's, airports, ATIS's, and markers are shown on the map with the option of showing the name, frequency, and ID. When you hold the mouse over any of these, it'll show you all different information about it, including range (where applicable), direction to fly, distance, and position. In the status bar, it will show you your current airplane (if you selected it), heading, altitude, and speed. On the left it also has autopilot functions such as heading, altitude, navigation hold, and speed. These are nice since you can't see where you're flying while this is open.
The next (and a little bit less obvious) feature is the flight plan creator. All you have to do is pick two points and it will automatically select all your waypoints, and then plot them on the map. Of course, if you're still used to doing it all by hand, it also allows you to select each point manually. You can even select what you want to use (VOR, NDB, airports, etc.) and the range between two points, and it will make a flight plan for you. If you like, FSNavigator will also make GPS points along the your route to make it a straighter path. As of right now you can only save the flight plan in a format FSNavigator will recognize, but maybe it'll be able to save them for different programs in the future. You can't set the autopilot to follow the flight plan, either, so you still have to fly. The one thing I don't like about the flight plan creator is that you have to manually select the points. By this I mean you have to scroll to that section of the country and select the airport (or whatever). This also means that you can add any point into your flight plan. If you select a point that isn't a valid marker, it'll add that point into the flight plan as is. I suppose this is to make up for the fact that there are no fixes in the database used for the program.
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Some smaller features include the fly to feature which allows you to select a point and it will update your autopilot to send you towards that point. You can also relocate to almost any airport by select the airport and then selecting the function from a pulldown menu. You can also set the map to follow you as you fly, so you don't have keep recentering the screen (a nice little feature for us lazy people, I suppose).
For my flight to Dallas, I found this program extremely fun to use. Not only did it give me a good idea of where I was and how much longer I had to go, but it was more fun than watching the clouds pass by the cockpit. Also, I was able to run out of the room for a while, and know where I was when I got back into the cockpit. I was a little off course, though, which isn't a big deal. It would be nice if you could set the autopilot to hold your flight plan, but I haven't been able to find anything like that. If the programmer's planning for a new version, maybe this will be something he thinks of. But for now, all you can do is add it to your wish list and wait for the next version.
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With as many features that are built in to this program, there will always be more that people will want. As for me, I'd like to be able to export the flight plans to different programs so that I can see the route in the cockpit. Also, the ability to set the autopilot to hold the course. I suppose it you could export the file to something your GPS could read, that wouldn't be necessary, but still nice for people who don't have a GPS. One thing I noticed is that when using multiplayer, the other person's aircraft does not show up. It would be nice if you could see other aircraft who are in the session with you just like you can on the Flight Simulator map.
Overall, this is a great program. I searched high and low but could not find anything wrong with it. It's my favorite free add-on for Flight Simulator 98. As with every program, there's still room for improvement with add-ons, but this is excellent how it is now. You can download it from the FlightSim.Com file section under FS98 Utilities Miscellaneous. For those of you who don't want to spend the extra money for a program that does half as much as something like this, I recommend you download FSNavigator.
Aaron Read
jester007@usa.net
