How to keep VOXATC focussed?

[Majick 0]

I've done three VFR flights with VOXATC now. On not one of them has the software been able to run the flight from start to finish without some sort of messing around to get it going again.It especially likes to forget what it was doing after it asks for a frequency change. Sometimes disabling and then re-enabling VOXATS seems to get it going again. I just finished a flight where I landed the aircraft and left the runway before being able to get VOXATS to allow me to communicate with the tower. And then I had to pretend I had only just got the airfield in sight and go through every comms I should have done before landing.When destination towers do recognise me it doesn't seem to be until I am on top of the airfield.So....this product has a lot of happy customers it seems. Whats the secret to making it behave properly?RegardsJon

[zfehr 1]

If you can set your antivirus/firewall to ignore VoxATC and FSX this might help. VoxATC is using the Simconnect to communicate to FSX which means that your antivirus will be constantly interrogating this communcation and slowing down the process. If you don't know how to do this you can try flying in FSX with VoxATC with the antivirus/firewall disabled (and disconnect from the internet if you aren't comfortable doing this) to see if that is the bottleneck causing the slowdown.

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Jon,Sorry to hear you are experiencing some issues.I have not experienced the symptoms you describe personally although on one flight I had a problem when I flew from 'Le Harve' to 'Menorca' (IFR though) where I experienced some difficulties associated with frquency changing. The problem appeared to be (my diagnosis) that I was 'pushing' the program by forcing a 'ready for departure' when it was already working on it in the background. Sorry if that sounds strange but in effect VOXATC was just taking a long time to give me a prompt (i realised this later when I went back for another flight) and as a result it appeared to confuse the later actions of the program. Although the departure commincation itself appeared to be ok it did then forget to give me a new frequency like you describe.The problem for me appeared to be that particular airport on that runway so with that in mind have you tried different airports just to make sure.I know that is not a solution but it may help eliminate the airport itself.I have flown from (Dundee, Edinburgh, Newcastle mainly as my starting points) and these all work very well.Sorry I can't offer any more guidance but keep with it, as it does work and it does work very well.

[Majick 0]

Zane, OB,Thanks for the advice. I've turned off the firewall and it does seem better. I did a VFR flight from Cranfield to Kidlington this morning. These are the glitches I experienced:1/ After take off I decided to overfly the airfield so using the 0 menu I asked for permission to enter thei airfield's airspace. This crashed the program, which then requested that I re-enable it. Although I tried to repeat the comms up to the point where I was, it wouldn't proceed past the line-up command. So I had to restart entirely.2/ On the second attempt I decided not to overfly the airfield :( I was told to change frequency, and then got the red message telling me to fly my flight plan. How do I know what frequency to change to? It doesn't tell me.3/ In the absence of any further instructions I flew my flight plan. When I arrived at Kidlington nothing happened so I used the 0 menu and told it to change frequency to destination airport. It then prompted me to change frequency, but when I did nothing happened. I'm guessing if I had used this option earleir in the flight maybe I would have got a useful prompt. But surely the frequency I need is for ATIS, not the destination airport?4/ So I re-enabled VOXATC again and thankfully it recognised that I was at Kidlington and told me the ATIS frequency, which then led on to a successful landing sequence. How could I have been told the ATIS frequency without having to restart VOXATC?5/ After landing I pulled off the runway onto another runway, expecting to be given some ground instructions. None came and the only 0 menu option I was left with was to report a go-around. How do I tell VOXATC I have landed or left the runway if it is too stupid to recognise these events?I realise that things will get better with experience, but it seems to me that if anything unscripted happens this program can't cope. That's not how it works in real life. Surely there needs to be a way to tell VOXATC to resume the flight plan from the appropriate point if something has gone wrong - is there a reset command or something that I haven't found yet?Sorry for all the questions. I can see huge benefits from this add-on, and things are improving, but so far it's record is 4 simple VFR flights and four failures. I dread to think how it (and I) will cope with complex IFR flight plans!! There's serious danger of my headset getting trashed before I have learnt to use VOXATC :( RegardsJon

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Jon,In order to help a little with confdence I can honestly say I very rarely have any problems in finishing a flight and they are nearly always IFR so no problems there. Even when you add SIDS and STARS into the mix all usually goes ok for me.I will have a go a flying the flight that you describe, cranfield to Kidlington VFR, (that should at least prove the flight works ok or not) but this may take me some time as I have some home duties to perform first :)Almost certainly your problem (number 5) is related to the progam not knowing that you have landed. The normal is for the prompter to show 'report vacated runway' as soon as you leave an exit. As I said before I don't use the prompter all the time so I would just give the call "Golf Foxtort ... vacated runway" and voxatc wil respond with "taxi to park 3 via Golf Bravo etc". In your case however I believe it would not work based on what you describe as the only visible option being a go-around.I'll post as soon as I have the results of that flight.OldBadger

[Majick 0]

Hi Jon,In order to help a little with confdence I can honestly say I very rarely have any problems in finishing a flight and they are nearly always IFR so no problems there. Even when you add SIDS and STARS into the mix all usually goes ok for me.I will have a go a flying the flight that you describe, cranfield to Kidlington VFR, (that should at least prove the flight works ok or not) but this may take me some time as I have some home duties to perform first :)Almost certainly your problem (number 5) is related to the progam not knowing that you have landed. The normal is for the prompter to show 'report vacated runway' as soon as you leave an exit. As I said before I don't use the prompter all the time so I would just give the call "Golf Foxtort ... vacated runway" and voxatc wil respond with "taxi to park 3 via Golf Bravo etc". In your case however I believe it would not work based on what you describe as the only visible option being a go-around.I'll post as soon as I have the results of that flight.OldBadger

Thanks very much!

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Jon,Just flown the flight from Cranfield to Kidlington VFR.All went well.I set up a flight with a VFR flight plan starting at 'parking location 1 GA small'Picked the aircraft (Realair DUKE), set the fuel level loaded the flight plan and saved the flight.Loaded the flight again and picked 'fly now'You are saving a flight and then reloading it; yes (important)!Comms went like this:-ATIS 121.875 ( seleted and listened)VOXATC; tune to tower '134.925' (I think)Prompt; radio checkMe; 'Cranfield Tower GBAFM radio check 134.92'VOXATC; 'readability 5'Me; readibilty 5 alsoPrompt; ' request startup'Me; 'Cranfield Tower GBAFM request startup'VOXATC; startup approvedPrompt; 'at park 1 ... 'me; 'Cranfield tower GBAFM at park 1 request taxi ....'VOXATC; 'taxi to rw 18 via A F E'After taxing to runway (not pretty - I don't know the airfield and did not have chance to prep) Prompt; ready for departureMe 'Cranfield tower GBAFM ready for departure.VOXATC; 'GFM hold position'me; 'hold position GFMVoXATC 'GFM line up RW 18'Once at the end of the runway VOXATC gave wind and clearance for takoff''left turn out VFR surface wind calm clear take off'Once up in the air I got a message from the prompter to say 'clear of the area change to enroute frequency.This confused me a little as I was not sure what freq to use. I tried the freq for approach at Kidlington but the prompter suggesting going back to the Cranfield tower.I put it back to that setting and pressed 0 to get options.Option 5 was 'contact the destination'.I did this and the prompter suggested changing to a new frequency (sorry did not get it). I think it was OXFORD ATIS and then OXFORD approach.After this I was asked to give a report (standard) and when accepted I got a 'join overhead left hand RW 19 kidlington QFE 987mb report airfield in sight'When I reported airfield in sight I then got a 'report downwind instruction'After reporting downwind I got 'you are no 3 to land - report final'On reporting final I got ' you are no 1 cleared to land RW 19 wind 173 @ 0'on the ground (runway) I got 'turn left any intersection' followed by 'contact oxford ground on 121.95' as soon as I vacated.I then gave the 'GBAFM vacated runway call ' in reponse to the prompter to be told to 'taxi to park 2'As I said this all went pretty much as it should, I did have a bit of confusion with the 'change to enroute freq' however VOXATC handled it all ok.There must be something wrong here with your setup.I am assuming you are saving and then loading an FSX flight and that you have previously ran the VOXATC indexer.Sorry I did not get all the prompts etc for you but I was a bit rushed and thought it better to at least check that the flight worked ok for me.Hopefully it will help a little though even if it is just building confidence that it should work better than you are experiencing.OldBadger

[flyerkg 62]

I have also had issues with VOXATC forgetting I was on an active flight plan and never let me communicate with tower at my destination airport. Even all the way through 10 nm, Approach never handed me off so I switched frequencies and tried to communicate with Tower with standard phrases and no reply, only the display to change frequencies back to Approach. I eventually landed under FSX default ATC. I will consider the anti-virus/firewall issue, but I am not inclined to disable anything in order to fly FSX. Thank you all for comments and discussions.Keith

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Jon,I did one more flight (Cranfield to Kidlington VFR)Same results as before although winds were different so different RW's.Took off RW 22 at Cranfield and shortly after that I got the prompt to say 'clear of area changing to enroute freq' at which point I selected from the options (0 on keyboard) option 5 to contact destination.Then I was given a prompt to contact Oxford tower, then ATIS, then back to oxford tower. After that all instructions were as per the previous flight apart from the fact that they were related to the currect runway in use at Kidlington RW 21.It is possible that delaying the selection of option 5 until much nearer Kidlington may cause a problem so I will try that later.OldBadger

[Majick 0]

Hi Jon,I did one more flight (Cranfield to Kidlington VFR)Same results as before although winds were different so different RW's.Took off RW 22 at Cranfield and shortly after that I got the prompt to say 'clear of area changing to enroute freq' at which point I selected from the options (0 on keyboard) option 5 to contact destination.Then I was given a prompt to contact Oxford tower, then ATIS, then back to oxford tower. After that all instructions were as per the previous flight apart from the fact that they were related to the currect runway in use at Kidlington RW 21.It is possible that delaying the selection of option 5 until much nearer Kidlington may cause a problem so I will try that later.OldBadger

I'm inclined to think that was my biggest error. In future I will hit the 5 option when told to change to en-route frequency, or at least do it earlier than I did. Maybe that will result in me getting ATIS and tower frequencies in the right order. I guess it would be pretty abnormal to stay tuned to the departure frequency all the way to the destination!On reflection I think the reason I did not get ground handoff was that because I didn't see any clear taxiways I turned off the active runway onto the inactive one. FSX ATC would have detected this but perhaps VOX ATC doesn't.Thanks very much for the experimenting :(

[Majick 0]

Oldbadger,OK... I did a flight from Kidlington to Bournemouth with only one glitch. I changed frequency to Bournemouth Arrival as soon as it would let me (around 36 miles out). Switched to ATIS and back to Arrival. But when I got to the airport I needed to disable and re-enable VOXATC to remind it I was there. Maybe I will switch a bit later next time, perhaps 20 miles out.One thing I did which you advised was to save and reload the flight plan, rather than just saving it and starting. I wonder if that made the difference. So I'm very pleased and don't want the developers to choke as one other poster stated!RegardsJon

[Guest parxuk]

Just my 2 pence worth, but having just reinstalled all my FSX stuff after a 6 month break, and updating to VOXATC 5.63(a) i am getting the same kind of problems. The ATC just forgot i was there and didnt hand me off from Manchester Centre to Liverpool for the arrival. Very annoying. VOX could be so great, but there are just too many little bugs.

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Jon,Glad you are making progress.VOXATC is not perfect however it does add to the experience. I must admit most of my flights are IFR now and although I have not really had the problems that you have encountered when flying VFR I still can't manage a report first time :)I always get 'say again'Happy flying.OldBadger.

[Guest stpierce45]

Hello all. Does anyone know if this issue is being looked in to? I have been using VOXATC for years and this latest version, 5.63 (I think) is giving me the most problems. I don't think I have completed a flight yet with full communications. It always drops off when I should be contacting approach. Love this program. Adds much immersion to the sim. Just wish this problem could be looked in to.Steve

[OldBadger 0]

Hi Steve,can't help on the 'getting looked at aspect' I am just a VOXATC user like yourself, however I am not getting the problems that you, and others, are experiencing nor do I know what it is likely to be. I tried the flight that Jon mentioned he had initial problems with several times, and on every occasion it worked perfectly for me. I know that is no consolation to you but have you tried asking (support email) over at the VOXATC site itself as Tegwyn has always responded to me whenever I have had issue although sometimes it does take a little while.PS I do use 5.63 as wellSorry I can't be more help on this one.OldBadger