Still off topic. Going by what CoastalDriver said, I'm lucky because do not live too far out in the country, about 100 kilometers from Melbourne, and we have a very fast (30Mb/sec) cable network with their plans getting better all the time. I have friends who live 20 kilometers away who get charged huge amounts for small download limits. I consider myself lucky because the company picked our city to install cable.

As for IVAO or VATSIM, I doubt I would be able to pause FSX in mid flight (not that you can pause it anyway) if I found I really needed to. I have too many bad pain days to allow me the joy of flying without taking a break now and then.

Mark

Yeah, with a 3G connection it's hard to maintain a stable connection for the required amount of data. You don't REQUIRE voice, but it's much easier and more "professional" like that.

You cannot pause online, well, at least you shouldn't, not for more than 5 minutes. As for pause on TOD or similar, the same applies - And if you're under ATC control, you have to be there and you simply cannot pause.

I guess i didn't remember all of that 

Markoz wrote on Dec 6^th, 2011 at 12:59am:


Mark, excuse my asking, but how much do you pay to get your 30 Mbps? For the comparison my 20 Mbps cable connection here in Rio de Janeiro, costs about US$ 100.00 per month.

Pinatubo.

Pinatubo wrote on Dec 6^th, 2011 at 10:25pm:

It depends on the download allotment. I'm paying $AU80 a month for 120GB of traffic (upload and download) per month. They have just been "bought out" by a larger ISP Company and I will soon be paying $AU70 400GB per month at 30Gb/sec.

The second part to all this is that it is split in two. 60GB during peak time 7am - 1am and 60GB for offpeak time 1am to 7am. Our slow down for exceeding our limit is 64Kb/sec.

There are better plans for less out there, but they have not been fully introduced to where I live. Once they are, I might switch.

The big downside to my broadband is that we have 4, sometimes 5 (a laptop), computers using the one internet connection through a router. I have 2 adult sons still living at home who spend most of their time playing multiplayer games online all day. Plus the fact that I download a lot of files when I need drivers for computers I fix. It all ads up. We usually manage to just stay under our limit, but once every 4 or 5 months, we exceed it and get a slow down for a day or two. So our internet, at present, is borderline enough. It should be plenty once we start the new plan, but like most others times, we get more so we use more.

Mark

Pinatubo wrote on Dec 8^th, 2011 at 1:52am:

I did have their Pay TV, but I dumped that a few years ago when they changed it too much and it suddenly started costing us a small fortune to keep. Our home phone is VOIP through our ISP. The service and phone calls are quite cheap compared to a normal phone line.

Mark

The approach plate for an ILS is the way to go, and of course, a legal requirement for real world instrument flights.  I have access to terminal procedures through membership to the Airplane Owners and Pilots Association, but for simulation I sometimes just "wing it" to expedite landing at an airport I don't want to to take the time to download or look up.  The following works good for me when I am not trying to exercise real world proceeedures and should work adequately for those without access to approach plates:

Look up destination airport on the FSX map.  Note the airport winds, field elevation, and ILS equipped runways.  Select a runway taking best advantage of winds and note the localized frequency and approach course.  Also visualize an intercept course from current location to the beginning of the ILS course shown on the map.  Exit Map and return to flight, then setup localizer frequency and course.  Turn to intercept the localizer and navigate to around 2500 feet above field elevation (terrain permitting, otherwise adjust as needed)  Adjust intercept course enroute as needed (if GPS available, use as self-contained radar vectors to intercept point) and slow to approach speed.  Intercept localizer and turn on approach course.  Watch for glide path cues to become active and aircraft below the glide path.  Continue approach with normal ILS procedures (including intercepting the glide path from beloe) to landing or missed approach.

Happy flying,
GW

Agree I use FSX the same way for places I don't have charts for and to work out what is what, very handy. I really would like some enroute charts for here and there but alas apart from the US ones (which by the way will cover most of the world in generalised detail) I have not been able to find others in paper that I could use here when simming.

I do have links I coul post for Australian, French, US and Japanese Charts and a lot in Europe as well,  some like the Europeans and Japanese you have to create an account to get access but no payment is required, the FAA stuff is free for the US and all US Territories, same with the French and European stuff, not that I have used it much but it was handy for Tahiti and places like that in the Pacific. I can't get the Pacific Region because most of those countries charts are issued by the NZ CAA and they are strictly subscriber and pay, not that it matters much as you can always get the ILS frequencies, runways and approach course out of FSX but not other approaches bit of problem though for a place like Canton Island in Kiribati which only has an NDB approach. I fudge it for those places and give myself a GPS designed ILS approach and watch the radar altimeter like a hawk, after all no point in crashing then starting all over again after hours across the big pond.