PilotEdge Forums

i seem to be doing well staying in front of the airplane during departure, however on the decent, especially IFR using a complex STAR and being hopped from center to socal to socal west to approach to tower while trying to hit my altitude steps, i get behind the airplane, and get lost on who im talking to and go heads down fiddling with the gizmos instead of flying the plane. Looking for some advice on how to manage the flood of information and rapid fire comm pressure while trying to keep on the plate. tonight i tried keeping a seperate kneeboard just tracking the freq changes, but while im doing that, i blew a descent altitude getting it in the box.

Get a flying buddy to help devide the workload.
If you are using x-plane---- https://sky4crew.com/smartcopilot/

There's a reason those airplanes are certified for 2 pilot operations and not single.

Practice is the only thing that will get you faster by yourself. We've all been there!

Setting freqs in sims can be slower than using the real hardware. Consider using keyboard shortcuts to manipulate the COM1 stdby freq, that way you can set the freq quickly without having to move the mouse to exactly the right spot on the screen and clicking a bunch o' times.

Keith Smith wrote: Consider using keyboard shortcuts to manipulate the COM1 stdby freq

i actually stumbled across a nice shortcut, with vatsim xsquawkbox installed on xp11, i can hit '<enter> //127.8' and it will change the com1 frequency. between anticipated flipflops like tower/dep and suprise changes like crossing across a few SoCal dep boundaries, this shortcut was enough pressure relief to keep me aviating. i also made a spot on my kneeboard pad with more orginization of anticiapted and given freqs with labels. between these two changes i am feeling much better about staying in front of the radio stack.

What kind of plane are you flying? If you have a GTN750, you can quickly punch in the freq more so than dialing it in. Once you put the freq in then it usually gives you the controller info which also might be a helpful tool. I also will save the freq in the 750 under my favorites for areas that I fly often and then once I switch to a controller will load up what should be the next controllers freq in my standby.

If you are flying in FSX/P3D some planes offer FS2Crew where you can tell your co-pilot the freq and he will dial it in for you which might also be another helpful tool.

I fly Virtual Reality so I heavily rely on the 750 to quickly dial in the freq since its hard to read things outside the headset. Do able but not as easy as having full view.