After Flight?

[Hammerpgh]

Hi all,

I have been thoroughly enjoying myself with s few short local flights this last couple of evenings but I have a couple of probably stupid questions that I am going to ask anyway.

After landing where exactly am I supposed to go. I go to the exit instructed (when I can find the damn thing but what then? and if I want to take-off again am I mean to do something to refuel or is this done automatically.

Cheers

Peter

[beefhole]

Hey hammer!

We need a few more details first.  What aircraft and to what airports are you flying to?  Did you file IFR?

It is important to know whether or not your arrival airports have a ground frequency.  If they do, then you switch to ground upon exiting the runway and request taxi clearance.

If it's an uncontrolled airport, then the taxiing is up to you  Just try to find a ramp area and park it there.

You have a few options for refueling-most of the small airports have a refueling station, marked by a bright yellow square.  Taxi into this square, and voila!  Full fuel (if it doesn't work, try shutting down the engine, or putting on your parking brake).

However, there's another, much easier, and, more often that not, more realistic way to do it-hit alt, 'a', then 'f'.  From this screen, you can specify exact amounts to fuel individual tanks.

Hope that helps

[RHeite]

When you land and Twr instructs you to turn off next taxi-way, do just that, if it is a small rwy, you may have to go to the other end, but the first taxiway you see coming off of the rwy when your airspeed is down safely, around 10-15  knots, turn the acft off onto it.

Twr will hand you off over to ground.  Change freq to the ground. Some airports will give you the option to park, if you select this option you will be directed to the parking area weither it be on a ramp (open parking) or a gate (by the terminal).

If the airport has no parking, or at least none that are entered in FS (MCAS New River (KNCA) had none, so I went in with AFCAD and added some) than your only option will be taxi for takeoff.

Either way you choose this, if you aren't sure where to go, you can choose to turn on PROGRESSIVE TAXI this will display a purple dashed line that will direct you where to go along the ground.

As to refueling, if you need to look for the gas-station like building.

[DJ_Zephyr]

Note: Most small airports don't have fuel depots, so if you're looking for fuel, zoom in or make a low pass to check for fuel depots.  If ya don't see one, don't land, you'll waste gas when ya hafta take off again.  Just check the next airport on your route.

Most of the big airports (like Kennedy Intl, O'Hare, etc) have fuel depots, but they can be hard to find.  I don't know if anyone has made maps of these airports for reference.

And even if there aren't any parking spots, you can usually pull off into the grass on the side of the runway and rest a bit before continuing on.  The tower guys won't get upset, as long as you don't hog the runway!

[beefhole]

For big airports like Kennedy and O'hare, it's actually more realistic to is alt+a+f, because in real life they'd bring the fuel to you

[Hammerpgh]

Thanks for the info guys,

I have only so far been flying from London City Airport to other airpotrs not too far away while I get used to things. I have been tuning to the ground frequency so it seems I have been doing the right thing but I wasn't aware of the refuelling options yuo have all mentioned so will look into these on my next flight this evening.

With regard to the airports themselves is there any where with details of their configurations, etc. so that I can be more aware of the layouts prior to trying to land?

I must admit that I have been surprised by the lack of documentation with the sim as I always thought flight sims were heavily laden with all sorts of info. Is this all now just included in the Learning Centre? The only printable document I have come across on the CD's is a copy of the manual in pdf format.

Cheers again guys.

Peter

[JBaymore]

Peter,

There is a lot of info in the learning center.  It is always the place to look first.  ;)  Microsoft saves some cost and increased profits by not including a printed manual  ;D.

Also... at leastfor US destinations.... terminal area charts can be downloaded from places like airnav.com.

[TacitBlue]

A very useful tool that is always over-looked is Chart Viewer found here on SimV, which you need Manuels Service Pack 3 to run (also here). It allows you to bring up a simple map of any airport in the sim while in flight, and during ground operation. On the map, fuel areas, parking, taxi ways, and runways are all marked for easy reference.

[Hammerpgh]

Nice one Tacit.. that looks like just the job.

Peter