Hello!

Just want to sort out the answer to a couple of questions before I get AirTrack for my iPad. I'd be using it with FSX.

1. Once I have loaded a flight plan from FSX I am aware that it will appear in AirTrack. I am not too interested in editing the flight plan from AirTrack, but am I able to enter holding patterns and select a SID/STAR which will then be flown by the AP?

2. Do I NEED to purchase an AIRAC subscription if I don't really care about it being up to date? I want SIDs and STARs but I'd rather not have to buy or subscribe to anything extra.

Cheers
James

Hi,

In answer to your questions above:

1) Not exactly; when you load a flight plan the plan will be sent to AirTrack so it will be drawn in AirTrack and you will be able to follow the flight on its EFIS display. When you then select a SID or STAR in AirTrack, the *AirTrack* flight plan will be updated and the points of that SID or STAR will be added to its flight plan. But these points will not be sent back to the aircraft due to the FSX limitation. This means that the AP in FSX will stick to the original flight plan and will not follow that SID or STAR.

You have two options here:

a) You fly that SID or STAR manually; the procedure will be displayed in AirTrack's MFD so you can adjust your heading or even use AirTrack's auto-pilot HDG command to adjust it and this will work. So you can use the auto-pilot HDG command for this but LNAV or VNAV won't work here.

Once you have completed a SID your auto-pilot can resume LNAV navigation from the original plan. And once you have completed a STAR you can fly the approach as you'd normally do, visually or using ILS or something else.

b) You have an aircraft in FSX which has a built-in FMC with support for SIDs and STARs and you select it in FSX to update FSX's flight plan, and in AirTrack to update AirTrack's flight plan. Assuming the SID or STAR is the same on both (most of them will be but there can be occasional differences if you're using a different AIRAC cycle in AirTrack and FSX) then you can fly the SID or STAR automatically too.

2. Nope. AirTrack comes with a default Navigraph 1006 AIRAC cycle which includes SIDs and STARs so you can use them out of the box and you don't need to purchase anything. Most of these SIDs and STARs might still be up-to-date.

Naturally however, these change over time, depending on the diffrent AIPs in the world; so it may be that one particular SID or STAR you are flying changed recently and instead of comprising say, FIX point AAAAA, it comprises now FIX point BBBBB. If you're flying for fun, this might not be a problem, but if you're flying online and a controller tells you to follow a SID, you might get into trouble if you go to AAAAA instead of BBBBB.

So it depends on how realistic you want it to be and how up-to-date you want to be.

As far as I remember in general SIDs and STARs end with a sequential letter which indicates their revision. Imagine for instance that a SID in AirTrack is called ABCDE 9M. If you are given the SID ABCDE 9N, this probably means that it is the same SID but that it has been updated and may differ from the 9M you have, so you should look at the charts in this case and spot the differences.

Hope this helps,
kind regards,
joao @ airtrack