Flying with High Altitude Airways

[Rocket_Bird]

Hello,

I'm just wondering, what is the proper method for flying with high altitude airways, getting from point a to point b.  Now I now how VOR and stuff works, and often, the flight planner gives me waypoints with vor stations... so thats good... i can get to those alright, but what about waypoints without vor stations?  What is the proper way to get to those waypoints without straying off course?

Last time i attempted this was to use a little errm... alignment with my vor stations but the wind soon blew me all the way to no where, and I had to turn on GPS just to get back on track... am I supposed to use GPS?  -confused-

[beefhole]

Yup, you're supposed to use the GPS.  First things first.  Set the GSP/Nav mode switch (not the NAV button, we'll get to that in a sec) to GPS.  This is VERY important.  Then, in order to follow your route, simply hit the nav button on the AP stack.  Easy!  Just make sure you switch GPS/Nav back to Nav for any ILS landings.

[Rocket_Bird]

So that how they do it in real life?  That simple?  Man, I thought there was some tough man's trick to it, and that I was cheating for turning on my gps  ;D  Thanks!

[Nexus]

If navigating the high-level airways with just VOR and DME, proper charts are a huge plus. The have all the info you need to know, inlcuding distances between the waypoints and VORs, which may be very useful in your case

The Jet routes and victor airways are very similar, but jet routes are flight levels-airways. The distances on the jet routes between VORs tend to be much greater aswell, due to the increased reception distances at the higehr altitudes...but in general there are no essential differences between the victor and jet-airways, they are part of the same navigational system (VOR/DME), and those differences that do occur are simply a function of different altitude coverage