Author: DaveLTB

There is a thread on x-plane.org that has been going for many, many years – regularly every week – run by @Kumiankka . And yet, judging from the lack of discussions and comments on this huge forum as a whole, I suspect many forum users are actually quite unaware of it. The reason (I guess) is probably because the title suggests that it is an on-line flying/VATSIM sort of thread. This is definitely not the case.

Do yourself a favo(u)r and browse through this Fly-In forum, choose a flight that looks interesting and click on the discussion thread for that particular flight. There are literally hundreds of flights to choose from – the more recent flights are better illustrated and laid out than the earlier ones way back in 2004.
I guarantee this will open up a whole new world for those of you who have X-Plane set up and ticking nicely, and are now looking for inspiration about where to fly. Each flight contains a description as well as some comments and tips and often links to relevant freeware sceneries if you feel so inclined.

Did you know that in the HUD (Heads Up Display) of most aircraft in X-Plane there is a tool that helps you to visually align your aircraft to the the runway touchdown point when you have a crosswind messing you around.

The Velocity Vector (often referred to as the Flight Path Vector or FPV, and represented on the HUD as a small circle with tiny wings, sometimes called the “bird”) is one of the most powerful instruments on a HUD in X-Plane.

Instead of showing where the aircraft’s nose is pointing (pitch and yaw), the velocity vector shows where the aircraft is actually physically moving relative to the outside world.

If there is a crosswind from the left, the velocity vector will be displaced to the right of the aircraft’s centerline/boresight cross.

To fly a precise ground track, you keep the velocity vector locked onto the desired meridian or runway extended centerline, rather than the nose symbol.

Did you notice that there is no more “Open Checklist” in the File menu drop-down of X-Plane12? I didn’t even notice when it was actually removed. True, it was a little limited, but for those who want to keep their installations “plugin free” that option just isn’t there anymore.

However, having stated the bad news, all is not lost. I presume one of the reasons for the removal is that there is a very good – very stable – absolutely no trouble – freeware – plugin available called XChecklist created by @sparker . If you have never seen this plugin, download it and try it out. There are many, many checklists published on this forum which are compatible with X-Checklist, so you are are bound to find one for your favourite aircraft. In fact, it is very easy to create your own checklist with nothing more than a humble text editor.

The plugin will work on Windows, Mac and Linux. And the good news is that it is far more capable than the original Laminar checklist.

When you are parked at a gate, you often cannot see the Taxi Route Arrows once ATC gives you permission to Taxi.

Your first assumption is that there is no taxi-arrow indication available for this airport. However, that is very unlikely. Instead, you may well find that the arrows are behind you or obscured or too far away to see. The solution is to go into Free Camera mode by pressing the key and then use the arrow keys to rise right out of the cockpit and then look around:

Here we find the arrows pointing back behind the aircraft.