FAA Charts and Tools for Flight Simulation Contributed by:   Bill Irvine, Vice-president of Flyin Operations for WestWind Virtual Airline As vice-president of flyin operations for an online virtual airline, my responsibility is to provide flight plans and operations procedures for our WestWind Virtual Airline flyins. This is where the rubber hits the tarmac regarding real world flying and simulator flying: both require accurate and readily accessible charts for IFR and VFR flight-planning. Maptech Digital Aeronautical Charts are the highest quality charts we've found anywhere. These charts on CD, come with their own viewing software that makes printing easy. The Maptech packages contain everything the active and enterprising flightsimmer needs: High Altitude IFR; Low Altitude IFR, plus High and Low Altitude VFR charts. Flight-simulator pilots who fly in the VATsim environment often use the aircraft's Flight Management system [FMS] or use the one which comes with SquawkBox. Locating VORs from a SquawkBox flight plan is a snap using Maptech's Chart Navigator 2002 software's Locate Command. Each waypoint in the *.SBP file includes the Lat/Lon coordinates. Even if you don't know the name of the facility - is HFD really Hartford VOR 114.9? - the Locate command will find it. Simply click the Lat/Lon icon on the tool bar and type in the coordinates N41.40 W72.33 and the chart magically moves to the Hartford VOR. The Locate tool is a very useful feature in Chart Navigator 2002's arsenal. Flight-simulator pilots who do most of their flying VFR, will really see the advantages of having scalable charts showing all the airports and visual landmarks they now see in new simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 and Fly!2002. You'll not only be able to navigate around all those mountains but will call them by name! The Drag Tool, represented by a small hand symbol, is the main way to reposition the chart. (The drag tool is the default cursor tool, so it is already selected each time you start Chart Navigator.) Left-click anywhere on the chart, and drag the chart to move it. To open a chart, highlight the title and press Open Chart (or simply double-click the chart title). You can view your charts at up to seven different zoom levels. There are several ways to zoom in and out on your charts. Another great feature in Maptech is if you want to open another chart for the area you're viewing, you can choose Charts at This Location from the Charts menu and select from a list of charts available for the location you're viewing. If you want to be able to view two charts for the same Lat/Lon, AND have both charts move/scroll together at the same time, you can link the two charts. A route is a series of locations (waypoints) connected in sequence. On a chart, a route is shown as a series of waypoint symbols connected in order by straight line segments. Just click the Route button on the toolbar or choose Create Route from the Route menu. Right-clicking on a chart and choose Create Route will also get the process started. Then, just click on the chart where you want to set a waypoint. As you click, waypoint symbols are added to the chart and are automatically connected with lines. When you have reached the end of your route and set your final waypoint, right-click and choose Save. The cursor changes back to the Drag tool (hand symbol). What this means to the active simulator flier is all the charts one will ever need are sitting beside you on the Maptech CDs. This alone makes Maptech Aeronautical charts on CDs worth having, especially, if your printed charts are as unorganized as mine! A great buy and must have for any serious simulator pilot.