Only Ground or Tower will talk to me

[Guest]

Hello All:Starting yesterday evening this would occur. VFR flight. No flight plan. Receive permission to taxi from ground with directions as as always. Taxi to hold short and contact Tower, no problems. Cleared for takeoff VFR. After liftoff, Tower releases me at the limits of their airspace. I contact departure for permission to transit the airspace. When they assign a squak and I autotune it. ATC stops speaking, by that no radar contact. The text message displayed is that there are no messages for departure.The controllers never speak to me again. I can hear them talking to other traffic. If I manually tune any other freq than the departure one, I receive the text message to tune departure on the previous frequency. In flight, if I become traffic for another aircraft, ATC calls the other aircraft and gives my aircraft type, clock position and altitude, just like normal, but does not provide me with any info about that other aircraft.When I land, I receive the text message to contact ground. I autotune ground and they give me taxi instructions.What do I need to reinstall, in order to again receive flight following and traffic advisories?Thanks in advance. Rick

[Guest]

You have to contact the appropriate Center and request flight following to receive flight following and traffic advisories. If you do not request radar services, they are not provided for VFR aircraft with or without flight plans.

[Guest]

As stated in my original post, I am communicating with, and complying with all ATC instructions. Ground and Tower both communicate with me. When I leave Tower airspace VFR and contact Departure, they assign me a squawk, which I set using autotune. After I do, Departure does not inform me that I am in radar contact, they stop responding. The message displayed in the ATC text window states that there are no messages for departure, and all conversation with my aircraft ends. Two way communications between other aircraft and the control position continue, and I am reported as traffic to others. But no comms are directed to me until I land and am directed in the ATC text window to contact ground.Rick

[Guest]

I beleive you have to be on a flight plan for continued communications, otherwise they will not talk to you unless there is traffic near you.

[Guest]

You can depart VFR and request to transition Class B airspace, if flying in it, which I have been. ATC will assign a squawk, report radar contact, and hand you off to successive approach/departure controllers until you exit Class B. If you enter Center's controlled airspace by climbing above the Class B airspace, ATC will hand you off to a Center Controller, and routine communications with Center will continue. Traffic calls and hand-offs will be provided. If you refuse to respond to ATC hand-offs or traffic calls, flight following will be terminated after the controller tries three times to get you to respond.In any case, even if you never did request flight following, the ATC dialogue box will display the control position to call for the airspace you are in, and you can select that position and call it at any time.Right now, for me, I can contact ground after start-up and receive permission to taxi. Tower will clear me for take-off, and then will advise me when I am leaving tower airspace. The next selection will be to contact Departure/Approach and request Class B airspace transition. I contact Departure, request transition, and receive a squawk. With the squawk set the next comm from Departure should be Radar Contact, cleared to transition Class B airspace, maintain own navigation. This is where the comms stops. Departure does not acknowledge me in radar contact, and I am not given the option of sending another message to Departure to establish contact. The next time that I can establish comms is after I have landed and am directed to contact ground.Rick

[Guest emergency_pants]

Yeah... you should definitely be getting ATC traffic advisories. I have had this once before and I can't quite remember what part of the World it was. I am afraid I can't give a remedy. Sorry. I just wanted to let you know that I have had this happen. Does this happen wherever you fly; is it Worlwide?I also have had ATC switch me between approach and center continuously, until I got fed up and switched the radio OFF!! :(Hope you find a solution.Si.

[Guest]

Emergency_pants:In the short time that I've had to work on this the problem has been restricted to repeated flights around Phoenix Sky Harbor, an area that I am now very familiar with from an ATC standpoint.My next moves, in order, will be:- Create a brand new flight at Sky Harbor- Create a brand new flight at a different location- Deselect Autotune and manually tune the freqs- Search the installation Disks for files to reinstall for ATC.RickAlong with this problem, addressed in thread Number 14321, From Rick: Blurred Textures Take Two, I am still trying to resolve blurred textures that first appeared 1 week ago. Despite my meager system specs, I have previously been able to render crystal clear textures out to 12-15 miles from the aircraft, with a very gradual blurring to the visible horizon. Now 3 miles at 5,000 feet AGL is best case, and the textures in the pattern are terrible.

[Guest]

This is because you have no flight plan, ATC will only advise you if there is a traffic alert. They won't chat with you though ;-)

[Guest]

Just because you asked to transition Class B airspace and were assigned a transponder code, does not mean that once you have exited the Class B airspace that the radar services will continue. Although I'm not sure why they are not having you squawk 1200 again, probably a bug in the infamously unrealistic MS ATC. Once you get outside of major airspace you have to tune in the area's ARTCC (Center) frequency and request to receive flight following.VFR aircraft, again with or without flight plans, have to call the CENTER controller to request flight following to receive radar services including traffic advisories. If you would like I can make a short flight video that will illustrate this process. It does not sound like any reinstallation is necessary, but to each his own. Keep in mind that the default MS ATC is far from realistic too.Hope this is more clear than last time! :)

[Guest]

As stated above, as my most recent troubleshooting step I created a brand new flight using a default aircraft, just to be on the safe side. ATC worked as advertised. No flight plan, requested a departure VFR to the east from Sky Harbor. Ground passed me to Tower. Tower cleared me for takeoff, and then released me at the edge of its airspace. Departure picked me up, assigned a squawk, and flight followed me, passing me to successive sector controllers. I received traffic calls as I would expect to.While in flight I switched to my favorite aircraft. ATC immediately recognized me, and continued flight following under the new call sign and aircraft type.The error was written into the previous flight file and recalled each time that I restared Flight Sim and selected previous flight. If I had saved the flight I suspect that the same error would reoccur each time that saved flight was reused. It continued to reoccur until I abandoned use of that file altogether.Thanks to all who read and provided suggestions.Rick