New User - can I Select What IF Does For Me?

[Mithras]

Hi, IF looks great, although one of the main reasons I bought it was for the random failure chances. I also like (alot) the flight planning information.

I find the destination selection difficult to use, the map is just a blurry global satellite image with no roads or airports marked on, am I using it wrongly?

Anyway, I wondered if I could just use IF for failures and for producing flight plan information. I'd like to plan my flight with PlanG though, with its highly detailed map. And I like to go into FSX settings each flight to choose my Saved Scenery Settings before a flight. Any help is appreciated, its very new to me, and looks quite daunting with all those options!

[Steve Waite]

With IF10, most of the time we just press a button to create the next flight to a compatible airport within our flight time range, and later press another button to launch the built flight - that's it, mostly.

Next up is perhaps going to the Aircraft Parameters and changing the Range, or Altitudes we prefer for the plans. We find range by doing a route, all the fuel is monitored and how the plane is flown.

Then we might go to the Flight Generation page to make it add improvements to the plans, or select from a different subset of airports, perhaps we set the filter to find airports South rather than North of us.

We might go to the aircraft page to select another.

The map page is not for zooming up to details, we can use PFPX, FlightAware etc, for that. Instead it is just to find the collection of airports in an area.

For better maps, look at the maps in the briefing, larger versions are available from the round green button in the map page, after we select an airport in the dropdown, or click on the map. We can click on the map and it will find compatible airports if we have the filter checked.

Scanning down the Index page in the Help (F1), might bring your attention to lots of stuff. IF10 practically does anything you want.

Have you read the walk through in the Help? Click on the Index link and there's all the main sections there.

The main premise, is that at a press of a button IF10 makes you the next flight to a random airport within the flight time range you specify (and other parameters, like only include airports with parking places, etc.). The airports you fly to and from are chosen to be compatible with your aircraft (you set your parameters like runway length), and you only get routes to compatible airports.

IF10 makes infinite routes from anywhere to anywhere, that properly follow the airways and are also 3D plans that take into account terrain and altitude restrictions. Plans built to your specification from the aircraft parameters page which governs preferred cruise altitudes and speeds.

When I want to specifically make a route manually I use PFPX, but any visual planner will do.

But I then drop the plan onto IF10 and the next flight is built from that plan, the full-on navigation data and information about the route is provided in the briefing and enhances any route built by any planner.

Once you did a route you use the Fuel report to set your Range. As you do more flights you get to know the performance of the aircraft personally.

The >augmented upgrade makes use of AIRACS and produces the best fit data between the current world Nav Aids, and the sim scenery, so you get plans that don't try to land you in a corn field as the airport/runway was built since the sim was made and you've not got the required latest scenery. It knows about all your addons and any Navigation systems they hold and these are kept in mind making plans. No other planner does this.

When you drop a plan from another planner it goes through the IF10 mill. With >augmented unlocked, and with a recent AIRAC loaded, you get the most reliable plans for aircraft like PMDG and AXE. It's the only planner available to provide an auto plan for the majestic dash 8. So you drop a plan from PFPX on IF10 and it spits out a file for the Dash, PMDG, AXE etc. or you just use IF10 autoplans - they are good.

You will have to give it some time, but it probably does what you want.

[Mithras]

Wow thanks Steve, that's a great an comprehensive reply. I will try and spend some time playing around with it later this week. I am extremely impressed with the flight plan detail and especially the fact it dumps to the Kneeboard which I have mapped to a joystick button. The kneeboard can be viewed in flight, too, so its perfect.

I'm not really going to need a random flight plan suggestion myself, I have definite ideas about the routes and flights I want to fly. But there are certainly things I want from IF. How does the failure system work? Does a particular button trigger this? Fly Now or something else ...?

[Steve Waite]

Failures are by probability, you specify a MTBF. So set in a mean time before failure to 1 hour and the plane falls apart on the ramp. You will have to go and play with it all a bit at a time.

To put in your own departure and destination are many ways. You can simply try the paste command "CTRL+V" and then type LFRZ EGGD (or whatever) in the box provided (or you already used CTRL+C to get an ICAO), and it will build the route and place you at LFRZ in the IF10 system.

Once you are in a plane, set up your panels and views and use the IF10: Main Menu - Save Settings, so you keep the views.

[Steve Waite]

Some more stuff to bring you up to speed:

If you want to autopilot right up to the runway select a Plan Type that includes Approaches, on the Flight Generator page (the one with the filter and flight duration), then specify "Computed Approach" in the "Mission Page", also see departures there. Initial Departure Fix, and Final Approach Fix (IDF, FAF) are included with >augmented expansion, and a lot more plan types, and also includes departure/arrival maps.

Of course, there's a lot of options to flying in the sim, but it's narrowed down to building flights, with a single press, to your pre-defined set of preferences. And only a few pages to go to for making changes, most of them hardly ever change anyway once set-up the way you like it. Best thing to do as new IF user is to follow the simple out-of-the-box walkthough. You can check the way it all works in minutes with a helicopter - build a flight - start the sim - takeoff - land 30 seconds later - exit the sim and get a result.

You notice the GPS is loaded with the plan and ATC ready to go. In order to get ATC to work with a plan loaded into the PMDG/AXE etc. (FMS equipped planes that refer to AIRAC NavData sets) you need >augmented unlocked. Augmented refers to the AIRAC and produces the subset of data that exists in the AIRAC AND the Simulator, so plans built from this are more reliable. What IF10 >augmented also does is create new waypoints for the aircraft navigation system if they don't exist in the AIRAC, like the waypoints in the Computed Approach. The MJC Dash 8 included, we can upload the plan to the Dash 8 and input the waypoints manually or automatically in the FMC console, including waypoints that would otherwise not exist. You get to set up Export Objects to send plan files in the proper format for a set of popular aircraft. The planner can show frequencies from the AIRAC (for planes that use the AIRAC for navigation) or from the actual simulator scenery (for planes that use the scenery for navigation).

[n1234t]

this add on sounds fairly complex and will , i admit , need some time to get used to / i like the promised realism with regard to wind and wether , yet would prefer to use the raw data generated to do my own calculations / dispite reading various articles , i was unable to learn , if i could avoid most of the " professional dispatch " features , and have a more primitive approach / may be it is just a matter of ignoring them - and that would be alright , yet please coment before i comit myself to a purchase
thank you

[Steve Waite]

Thanks for your interest.

Best thing to do is install the product and try out the walk through, it works in a limited form without registration, you should get plenty of ideas. In it's most limited form you could use it simply to find compatible locations to fly between. The >augmented and Professional versions could be used simply to output FMC data files for the MJC Dash 8 for example.

Steve