The Full Flight Briefing is an html document for display in a browser. It includes flight information from the Airport screen; flight times, payload, fuel, and abbreviated route information. A complete route information table and schematic diagram is included, along with departure and destination airport information, maps, aircraft flight notes, navigation waypoints, frequencies, and alternative airports.

Go to Other Settings page, where the number of nearby navigation sites and airports to include in the briefing can be adjusted.

The Estimated Time of Arrival shown is computed with the inclusion of wind and weather effects forecast to appear along the route. However, times between waypoints in the route table are shown as actual times, and do not have the adjustments for predicted weather or wind. Following the flight notes carefully should get your flight in fairly close to the ETA.

The Route Table shows Waypoints, Bearings, Leg and Total Time, point to point Leg Distances, and VOR/NDB Frequencies. The Leg distances are straight lines between waypoints; however there can be lots of turning around airports and this adds to the Total Distance shown in the route description, and can change the flight time considerably with large aircraft turning rates. More about Waypoints, Airports, Aircraft Configuration, and other instructions continue the briefing. Minimum altitudes shown are based on an average height for the area. Attention to altitude may be required over peaky terrain. Approaches are not computed to avoid high altitude terrain. Airports may require study before take-off or landing, when surrounded by high altitude terrain.

When we have End Navs showing in the route table, the first and last lines of the table show the End Navs, local navigation aids off-route. The arrows show the direction and distance to the airport from the local NavAid. Here at the destination end of the table, we see EBBR airport is on a heading of 270.3 degrees from VORD BUB, and BUB is 2Nm from the centre of EBBR.

Waypoint Region Name Heading T(m:s) Total Leg(Nm) Alt(ft) Min Route
..
Fix          EB OM02   16.4    1:41  2:07     4.5  2000  3000 ILS02
Airport      EB EBBR      -       -  2:09       -   184  3000 -
VORD 114.60  EB BUB  ↑270.3       ~     ~    ↑2.0     ~  2000 ~

The Route Map shows areas of water expanse and terrain altitudes with a graphic representation of the route. Mountain symbols increase in size depicting altitudes above; 2000ft, 3000ft, 4000ft, 5000ft, 6000ft, 8000ft, 10000ft, 13000ft, and 16000ft. Sea wave symbols lean in the direction of winds.

With very short routes a straight line between two airports can be a lot less distance than the flight distance. In these cases TOC/TOD will not be calculated.

The Top of Descent (TOD) may appear very close to an airport if the original plan intended to bring you in to land from the other side of the airport. If weather dictates you land from the side you approach, move your TOD back accordingly. SIDS and STARS are not actually included in the flight plan but the distances with the required turns to land and the time taken for approach are calculated for the ETA fuel.

Approaches: Information with approaches includes AA = Approach Altitude, and MA = Missed Approach Altitude (ft).

Indicated and True Airspeed Conversion Graph: Compare True Airspeed with Indicated Airspeed.

Near the bottom the briefing is a quick flight information roundup that can come in handy when entering routes into VATSIM etc.

NOTE: If the Briefing does not show in FSX, run IF Setup as the current user, the setting for the current logged on user must be set with the IF setup program.

Map Symbols

Nav Symbols

Insert your own section into the briefing

Edit Briefing Profile Text and Edit Briefing Aircraft Text menu items.

The briefing includes text from files which contain small amounts of text perhaps with handy or personal notes for flight and another file one for each aircraft type, where you can add notes specifically for that type of aircraft. You can include html statements as well.

There are two popup menu items to edit the text files:

• One for the profile, the text/html will appear in all your briefings. This file is stored in the IF\Profiles directory (IF_Briefing.txt)
• Another for the aircraft, the file named as the FSX SimObjects directory, the text/html will appear only in briefings for that aircraft. These files are stored in the IF\Profiles\Aircraft directory

When the flight is built the text and html will appear in the User section of the briefing.

User information section formatting

There are two commands you can put in the top line of any briefing text file to exclude the title, and place the file after the other file (if it exists).

In this example top line of the Profile .txt file, there are two commands:

• NOTITLE
• SECTIONEND

One or both of these commands can be used as required, at the top of any file, the aircraft file top line commands take precedence over any profile file commands.

These commands must be preceded by "IF:", and separated with ":". For example:

IF:NOTITLE:SECTIONEND

With this line at the top of the profile folder IF_Briefing.txt file:

• There will be no title to the section
• The profile folder IF_Briefing.txt file will appear after an aircraft folder IF_Briefing.txt file

If this line is not found at the top of the profile folder IF_Briefing.txt file:

• The section will have the title: "Profile User Information"
• The profile folder IF_Briefing.txt file will appear before an aircraft folder IF_Briefing.txt file

Insert html into your own section

Place your html statements between two reversed </pre> <pre> tags:

..
preformatted text
..
</pre>
..
html statements
<p>hello html world</p>
<a href="file:///C:\ProgramData\Ideal Flight 10\Profiles\Images\if_logo_white.jpg"><strong>IF Logo jpg</strong></a>
..
<pre>
..
preformatted text
..

You must experiment with what can be achieved within the FSX html Kneeboard.

The default profile folder IF_Briefing.txt file contains:

IF:NOTITLE:SECTIONEND
</pre>
<p>
<img src="file:///C:\ProgramData\Ideal Flight 10\Profiles\Images\if_logo_white.jpg" />
</p>
<pre>

This shows the Ideal Flight logo from the images section, with no title, and after any text and html found in an aircraft folder IF_Briefing.txt file.

Ideal Flight Fuel Calculation

The fuel calculator is rather more a facility to measure fuel use, during and for, any given flight. This provides values for Range based on the fuel actually used. We input Range into the calculator and the fuel is estimated with those conditions for each flight generated with that aircraft.

Advice on how to get the leanest fuel loading in Ideal Flight

Ideal Flight measures the fuel used by the aircraft in the sim and makes estimates from that, but we can alter the "Range" parameter to affect the overall fuel use.

During a flight the fuel consumption is recorded and can be shown in the on-screen message with the "Fuel Report" in-sim menu item, and is added to the flight log in more detail.

After the flight we can check the fuel report at the end of the de-brief assessment.

With Ideal Flight we fly, and get a 'feel' for the use of fuel through experience of that aircraft. We make our own adjustments to the flight; ascent rate, cruise speed, altitude, cargo, and find out how much fuel is used after the flight.

To alter the fuel calculation change aircraft properties. Go to the Aircraft screen in IF10 and press Aircraft Properties. Adjust Range, Cruise speed, Altitude, and so on.

Enable IF10 weather and generate the flight, fuel is calculated to be more if we are into the wind, and less fuel when flying with the wind direction.

Briefing Order:

To set the preferred order of the briefing sections go to Settings and adjust the positions of the buttons.

Flights\New Directory

Find all the flight and html files here. The briefing can be accessed by other machines if you share this folder. Look for 0_Ideal_Flight_Briefing.htm (0_ = profile ID), the other briefing .htm files are for the FSX Kneeboard and will not show the images.

Windows XP: see "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Ideal Flight 10\Flights\New"

Windows Vista and above: see "C:\ProgramData\Ideal Flight 10\Flights\New"

Ideal Flight fuel calculation, fuel consumption readouts, and quick flight information roundup section; registered copy only.