Classic British Flight Sim

On Saturday I made a crossing from New York to Manchester in a BOAC 707. The flight was fairly uneventful having to only adjust the heading on a couple of occasions. However everything went bazookas up when I descended over the Fylde Coast to begin my approach. I only got confirmation of the runway in use (06) after I had already started to aim for an easterly approach (24?) and so then had to do a u turn to get in line for landing from the west! So the question is this - how do I line up for approach when flying into Manchester from North America? Altitude, speed and the routes to follow etc? I would hate to put my passengers through that again! They were crapping theirselves!

Been there, done that! I use a little utility called Metarlive, available at Avsim and Flightsim :

"METARlive is a FS 2004 add-on module that allows you to quickly access real-world metar (weather) information for any airport that offers weather observations. METARlive appears as a single or multi-line display at the top of the main window. This module was mainly implemented due to FS's lack of ATIS availability during multiplayer sessions." The file is metarlive.zip by Mike Richer and it is all of 50kb!

The display can be hidden when you are not using it and the single line can be expanded to interpret the Metar information. I check it periodically during long flights and it usually is correct as to wind direction and so on. It is not infallible because FS ATC sometimes has it's own ideas about which runway is in use, despite the wind direction. Worth a try, the price is right and it has a very small footprint!

Nigel²

It is not infallible because FS ATC sometimes has it's own ideas about which runway is in use, despite the wind direction.

Aint that right.. and the main reason I don't use FS ATC

ATB
DaveB

ATC in FS is
Air Traffic Catastrophe, or Anti Traffic Correctness.

Thanks for reminding me of the plug-in.
I usually tune into the airports weather,
or I crab it in...

We often get crab weather here

Did you see that Dave? I tried to bring it back on course. And then it's like a penny off a record. Shwooooch.

Tell me Garry, is it the weather or the crab that come first.


......oh wait...

just incase it's the crab first.