Hi, David. This is sort of hard to read for me, being not familiar with the route there.

I would use some charts from e. g. http://skyvector.com/ and then look up the corresponding radials to fly to.
You can enter your flight plan there and see it superimposed on the rw charts.

Now on those charts, you see the intersections being defined as cross radials (and coordinates for the RNAV/INS guys), so with two working nav radios, you can spot the more or less exact location there.
For example, for COHOW you follow the J554 which at that stage is defined as the 089 radial from CRL (Carleton VOR) until you cross the 167 radial from YXU (London VOR). That cross section defines the intersection COHOW, so tune CRL on NAv1 and YXU on Nav2 with the corresponding courses set.

Watch the RMI to catch a glimpse on your current position in relation to those two stations then and you won't miss a thing.

Now, if you fly with the AP tracking a VOR course it will always adjust for the winds, at least when the deviation is big enough to deflect the needle and therefore trigger the 'I'm not on course' signal, roughly spoken. The AP will then hunt the needle which works good when not too close to the station.
So on your way to COHOW, you track course (does not necessarily mean heading) 089 from CRL and you then can read any deviation on your CDI. When flying manually, adjust for the winds or just let the AP do the work.

I've attached a useful map view for you, marking some of the necessary values in red. You mainly need the defined cross radials and the stations to tune.
Feel free to explore that SkyVector service, it's free.

Click for big!
I've only set up a rough route there, so don't mind the actual route.

With the work on the cross radials and some DME readings, you can work very precisely there. This even allows you to turn 'smart', taking your groundspeed into account to not necessarily overfly any waypoint but to turn in the way a FMC would turn your plane, which means roughly some 10% of distance from your current GS value before the next waypoint.
So flying at 500 kts GS, you would start your turn around 5nm out of the waypoint, unless ATC or charts stress the need to overfly it.

For the pros, remember that DME readings don't read the ground based distance towards the station, but the one from the hypotenuse, so taking your actual height into account too. A greater distances though, the error effect there is close to nil (e. g. 130nm ground distance at FL340 give you a DME reading of 130,11 or so = not a problem).

David,

Here is a High altitude chart of the leg CRL to JHW. [ vfrmap.com ]

I don't know why the various headings since the intersections are on the Jet airway.



The routing you talk about is J554, CRL to JHW.
You leave CRL on the 089 degree radial and fly
east to the X which
is the changeover point (I put a yellow circle around it).

This is the place you change from CRL to JHW.
The changeover point is not always the mid point
for many reasons such as VOR power and signal
because of its location, etc.

You will also see the two intersections are along J554.
COHOW is 71 DME from the JHW VOR and SURLY is 59 DME from JHW.
Example: COHOW is the 276 degree radial of JHW, but you would
place 096 in the OBS to fly TO the station.
The total mileage from CRL to JHW is 194 (Red Box).
If you add up each segment that is the total mileage.



Lou


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Dave,

Just to show you what I have, here is a screen capture I just took of the 727 VOR tuned to JHW 114.7 and tracking inbound to the VOR on the 096 degree radial at 71 DME.

The GPS shows the COHOW intersection as slightly to the right less than an 1/8 of a mile.

* Remember, you must change over to the JHW VOR at the changeover point which is shown on the high altitude chart with an X.



This is a blow-up of the HSI showing the plane is slightly north of course which confirms the GPS.

Note: At sixty miles, one degree is one mile wide. This HSI indication would be very close and no ATC would ever even question the position.




Lou


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OK.  So it seems that the info provided for the FSX Navlog is WRONG.  That would explain what is going on here.   

Thanks for the links to skyvector.  That is insanely cool.   I think I'll try to do the flight again with the info from there, maybe I'll be able to stay on course.

Geez, I hope that after my long texts, David hasn't gone MIA. 

I'm not convinced David understands what he is doing wrong! 

Lou

Sadly, there's no such neat service in the European area, but you can access some free charts (without flight plan overlay or something) here and there.
I think Eurocontrol offers some, with a free registration.

For planning along flight sim routes, I'm using Flight Sim Commander though, but this is payware and may distract you when starting as it has a rather old interface. There's a free trial available, just google it if you like.
FS Build may also be a tip there, the older 1.x version were freeware I think.

There are tons of features included in both and maybe the moving map helps on the first few runs. You can display and measure distances, bearings and so on and current nav data is also supported.
At least one more or less serious flight planning tool like these can be recommended in my eyes.

There are online services too, offering a free and a payware area, but I haven't tested those. Some work on a subscription basis, which I don't like much. But some planning features did sound good though, including maps and charts of all kind.