My Personal X-Plane Cheat Sheet
Which Is Probably Also Useful for Other Flight Simulators

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X-Plane 11 Specific

Bugs, bugs, bugs...

Expect a few problems with vanilla X-Plane 11. Most of the time when I tried to find answers online, I either found nothing, or it was someone asking or help, but not getting a reply. The Discord wasn't all too helpful either.

What works well

• Stability: The software seems to be stable, it crashed only once in my first month
• Realism: The flight models feel realistic. Runways aren't perfectly flat (There's an option to change that)
• Graphics: Scenery loads nicely, nothing is suddenly popping in

Problems and Surprises

• Autopilot: Oversteers a lot in the Baron 58, it is barely usable. The Cessna 172P is a lot better
• Bindings: Autopilot on/off is named Toggle Servos in the settings
• Audio: You can change the volume for ATC and other things, but the readback will stay loud at 100%
• Saving: You basically can't save and reload unless you're on the ground
• Graphics: Cockpits are dark in sun light, inside lighting can change abrubtly
• Documentation: The manuals for the airplanes are somewhat shallow and have a few omissions

Cessna 172P Skyhawk

Barely Can't Turn, When Taxiing Slowly

Maybe this happened, because I don't have a full cockpit, but only a humble Logitech Extreme 3D joystick. I had to increase RPM extremely, when I wanted to go around curves. Overall, I had to go scary fast on the taxiways to get around in a controlled manner.

Solution: Assign a key to Toggle Nose Wheel Steering so you can turn it off. (forums.x-plane.org)

Running X-Pilot on a Remote Computer
Because My Audio Drivers Are Broken and the Microphone Doesn't Work

My Sim-PC has bad audio drivers and the microphone doesn't work. A mike is pretty important for VATSIM, so I wanted to use X-Pilot on another machine (Mike-PC) which can hear me, and this was easy to achieve:
Edit the file ...\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins\xPilot\Resources\config.json on Sim-PC and change UseTcpSocket from false to true. Install X-Pilot on Mike-PC (no CLD download needed), use .simip <IP address of Sim-PC> in X-Pilot and connect.

How to Change the Tail Number (Call Sign)

Free Nav Data (For North America)

Although not being a strict requirement, you'll want to fly on VATSIM using current navigation data (Airports, procedures, etc.).
There are paid subscription services that offer this data with worldwide coverage, but the FAA provides free navdata for North America.

Cycle Mismatch

After downloading and installing the file, I got an error message about a cycle mismatch and X-Plane terminated:

Global Replace, Still Out of Date

After some digging, I found out about a global replace method, by simply renaming the file FAACIFP18 to earth_424.dat. The cycle mismatch message stopped appearing, but the G530 navigation computer was still unhappy:

Beware the Effective Date

The FAA web site offered 2 links, and I downloaded the most recent file. A friendly person on Discord told me to open it in Notepad and check the timestamp. It turned out, that I downloaded a version that is not yet valid. So I got the other file, verified that its EFFECTIVE time period is valid and reinstalled it. Finally, the out-of-date message was gone.

Detailed Instructions

1. Download CIFP_xxxx.zip
2. Make sure, the time period is valid. A file might not yet work.
3. Extract FAACIFP18 from the .zip archive
4. Rename the file to earth_424.dat
5. Store it in ...\X-Plane 11\Custom Data\

Beware, European data seem to change. I was missing ILS and VORDMEs after I installed the FAA data.

Links

Flight Planning

• Wikipedia: Flight Plan
• Luftfahrthandbuch AIP Austria (German and English)
• How to Program X-Plane11 Default 737 FMC
• How to Use Autoland on the Default X-Plane 11 737

Charts

Youtube Links

Educational Videos

Entertaining and Somewhat Educational

Glossary

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Terms

See also the extensive list of aeronatical abbreviations on Wikipedia.