As with most things in life, the majority of us do not have unlimited free time to devote to our hobbies and other leisure activities. Real life commitments of work and family along with unforeseen events often take up a majority of our waking ours leaving very little time for things like Flight Simulator. That being the case, here are some ways to maximize your time with FSX when time is of the essence.
1. Pick City Pairs That Are Not Too Far Apart
When deciding what two airports (cities) to fly between, try and pick ones that are not too far from each other, but that have enough way points for the proper calculation of climb, cruise and descent most FMCs need. The actual distance, nautical miles, should not the deciding factor, however. The most important factor should be the Estimated Flight Time between the two cities.
For example, the nautical distance between KBOI (Boise International) and KPDX (Portland International) is 305NM. The actual flight time, however, is just 38 minutes. This is a perfect route to fly if your time is limited (one hour) and it has enough way points for most FMCs on realistic payware addons to function properly.
A good place to find short (less than an hour) routes is:
Flightaware.com
First, do a search for the major airport of your choice. Once there, the site then allows you to look at specific flights and aircraft arriving to and flights departing from that major airport. Click on a specific flight, or aircraft type and it will give you the route in the standard SID-Trans(ition)-STAR format. You can then go to Aeroplanner.com and then download the real SID, STAR and Approach Plates referenced in previous blog entries ("The Realistic Way to Fly").
The added benefits of doing shorter hops like this are two fold:
A) The actual flight time is relatively short, but what this means for you as the pilot is you will constantly have something to "do" -- monitoring the autopilot; monitoring the thrust if the aircraft has no auto throttle; monitoring course headings, etc. -- Instead of just sitting back and day dreaming as the autopilot flies the plane.
B) Shorter hops give virtual pilots more chances to improve their skills than longer trips. Since the distance (flight time) is relatively short, this means you have more chances to practice and refine your overall skills (procedures, techniques). This applies to both commercial jets, prop planes and everything in between.
2. Save Your Flight Whenever and Wherever You Want To
This might seem obvious, but because Flight Simulator is often regarded as a simulation more than a "game" a lot of flight simmers completely forget they can save whenever and wherever they want to if they choose to.
In my opinion, virtual pilots shouldn't be worried about "impressing" someone by saying they can go from point A to point B in one session without saving because... The purpose of a game, or real life simulation is a certain event, or scenario can be done over and over again as many times as you want.
As a point of reference, real world pilots often focus on short scenarios in simulators and not long, drawn out ones. For example, they will run one specific scenario... Like an engine failure during takeoff... Or.... a difficult ILS approach with one engine out... Over and over again until they can respond to this type of emergency like it is second nature before moving onto the next scenario/event/procedure.
This aptly applies to virtual pilots whose time is limited because they can save at any time* during their flight and pick right up where they left off during another session, or if they want to practice certain skills over and over like real pilots in simulators do.
*The ability to save anywhere depends entirely on how an addon is developed. The default FSX aircraft can be saved at any point during a flight. However, certain addons may not have what are called "panel states" that allow a snap-shot of the instrument readouts to be saved. The only way to know if your particular addon has panel states active is to read the manuals, and just save and load FSX and see if the instrument readouts match the moment you saved the game.
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