A Tutorial & Review of the Goodway 5 Flight Planner for X-Plane

By Paul Mort

Before reading this article, let's take the time to consider what most flight simulator pilots look for in a good flight planner. The flight planner is one of the most important tools in the X-Plane toolbox. It gets us to where we want to be, so we need a planner that is comprehensive, easy to use, looks good, is accurate in its function, and is reasonably priced. In this article, we will put GoodWay 5's flight planner through its paces to see if it is up to the job.

Overview

In this first section, we will discuss exactly what the new GoodWay 5 Flight Planner is capable of achieving, and the benefits it can provide when planning and navigating your route. First and foremost, GoodWay 5 creates detailed flight plans, either manually or automatically, by simply entering your departure and arrival airport. Your chosen aircraft can be selected from a list within the flight planner. This option allows you to match the appropriate speed and time of your flight, according to the aircraft you have selected.

The generated route can be transferred directly to your aircraft GPS or FMC with a press of a button, and also saved for future use. The GoodWay 5 map covers the whole world and can be used to monitor your progress in the generated flight plan in real time. It can also search for navaids enroute and airports worldwide while maintaining your progress on the flight path. Detailed layouts and airport information such as nav and com frequencies, runway information and gate positions are easily accessible for any airport, and frequencies can be transferred directly to your radios.

GoodWay 5 works from X-Plane 10.51 onwards, including X-Plane 11 in Windows (64 bit) or Mac (64 bit).

The Package

The ability to try out a new item before we buy it is always a good thing as it gives us the chance to check out the functionality and compatibility of the product before committing to it. In my opinion, it is also a display of confidence by the developer in their product. I'm pleased to say that GoodWay 5 are among such developers, and a free demo of Flight Planner has been made available for download at http://www.xpgoodway.com

The demo is time limited, with slightly reduced functionality, but it is able to give us a feel for the product. A license is available at the above mentioned web site for the cost of 25 Euros which, when entered into the package, will give us full functionality. The installation of GoodWay 5 is simplicity itself. Once downloaded, we just unzip the folder and place it into our X-Plane > Resources > Plugins folder and that's it.

Functionality

Let's now explore the use of GoodWay 5 in detail.

Due to its 'plug-in' format, it uses very little of X-Plane's valuable resources, making it ideal for lower spec computers. The plugin sits idly in X-Plane, going unnoticed until we call upon it. To employ GoodWay 5's flight planner, all we have to do is bring up our 'Plugins' menu and select the GoodWay option. From here you will see 'Map', 'Flight Plan', 'Aircraft', 'Preference' and 'About' sub menus.

Our flight today, in a Cessna 172, will take us from EGHC Lands End Saint Just Airport in the picturesque southwest of England, to the metropolis of EGCC Manchester International Airport in the northwest. First, position your aircraft at EGHC in X-Plane and select the Menu Plugins > GoodWay > Map. We now see a window of our airport in red, with our aircraft nicely positioned there.