Northridge, those messages, do they come from RC's flight critique?

I would really like to try a new ATC experience.I have just downloaded and skipped through the PFE .pdf: boy, thats a lot of pages and the initial setup looks waaaay complicated. Not sure I could get my head around it.

PFE certainly seems complicated at first and it takes some getting used to. The latest releases of 2.13/2.14 however, resolve some niggling issues making it much more streamlined and affective in operation. As for the voices, they are legion and rarely sound computerised.vololiberista

Have you tried Vatsim? Absolutely best of all. And cheapest. Costs nothing to try. :(

The problem is coverage. An addon is there 24/7 and all airports are staffed or so to speak.

Concerning PFE... When taking off from EBLG (Li

Concerning PFE... When taking off from EBLG (Li

The problem is coverage

Nothing is perfect! Though in the evenig hours, when most of us have some time to fly, the coverage over Europe and the USA is medium to excellent.Add real human experience, the unknown factor, all possible procedures, real voice and accent diversity, flyinns and even real ops and... voila!All I want to advise to people who admit they need some new ATC experience is - JUST TRY.I guess VATSIM is another good suggested answer to the opening question: 'Do you want to take fs9 ATC too the next level ?'Worth having a look at (some that I chose) to have a general idea of what VATSIM is like:-

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Of course hats off to the developers of both RC and PFE. I'm sure these are very nice addons.

The real life procedure is for whoever is doing the comms to manually change to the tower frequency. However, PFE does it the other way by asking the crew to change. But one can always change manually. Set up the twr frequency on your standby comm and as you arrive at the holding point switch over. It usually works and IS the correct procedure!!!vololiberista

Thanks for your input vololiberista. I'll make sure to pay attention to the frequencies the ATC communicates then instead of losing time loading the map, clicking the airport and check the frequency list.But it makes sense: I'm the one asking for the clearance that I should be the one changing the frequency. I'm so used to the FS default ATC doing that for me all the time. And also a little bit because the co-pilot handles some of the comm when instructing which taxiways I should take :)Sometimes I wonder how they do it in real life :s Handling the communications, checking the instruments, going over the checklists and altering the FMC final approach if required, all in the short timespan before landing the plane :(I thought I had a stressful job at some time in the past :\Nice videos Rafal :(Somehow this looks more something for a real life pilot or pilot students than recreational desktop pilots like me xD I wouldn't even know how to reply on some of the instructions.By the way, what happens when you crash a plane of Vatsim? Are you banned from it? Just asking, 'cause I tend to crash mine from time to time... mostly because the destination airport I selected at random isn't suited for my plane :s

By the way, what happens when you crash a plane of Vatsim? Are you banned from it? Just asking, 'cause I tend to crash mine from time to time... mostly because the destination airport I selected at random isn't suited for my plane :s

Possibly you wouldn't be banned if you declared an emergency with the correct MAYDAY format! They wouldn't be able to fault you for that!!vololiberista

Possibly you wouldn't be banned if you declared an emergency with the correct MAYDAY format! They wouldn't be able to fault you for that!!vololiberista

It might be better for me never to show myself on vatsim then :] When I crash, it always comes down to: "Holy ****! The runway is to short!", followed by a building crash or cutting down the trees when trying to take off fast. Not something to be proud of :s

F J Mike - those "funny" comments are inflight.Rafael - Vatsim looks brilliant, I agree. Except: 1) If I could garantee there being controllers and pilots everywhere I wanted whenever I wanted............ 2) I doubt that I am near proficient enough in procedureI shall read bits of the PFE manual again and look at the forum.Nicholas

I will buy PFE sometime this weekend/next week and learn it, quite simply. Vatsim, while I have seen people use it and it seems terribly exciting, I'm not sure I'll gonna be great at it. I tend to be rather shy with these things. I'm not sure I'll have the guts to start talking openly and freely to these total strangers... And in all honesty, I have never liked these online, multiplayer type things. I have many games that feature multiplayer options, but I always end up playing single player.

I recently bought PFE 2.14 with the Voice Expansion and also the free Enhancement pack. I got it mainly for FS9 on my laptop, but I'll use it here and there on FSX on my desktop (where I use VoxATC mostly). All I have to say is .... awesome. There are TONS of voices, and it is just neat to hear something like that. I also flew from the US to Canada, and it was neat to hear controllers with French accents telling us Americans what to do and where to go. It's been a very enjoyable experience. It does take some patience to get set up, but I find it totally worth the investment.

I tried it a ways back. I was one of those simmers who found it very cumbersome to set up. Never got it to work so I tucked it away. Tell me, can you perform free flights using it or must you always submit a flightplan?

I tried it a ways back. I was one of those simmers who found it very cumbersome to set up. Never got it to work so I tucked it away. Tell me, can you perform free flights using it or must you always submit a flightplan?

You've got to create a flight plan, convert it through PF2000, and load it up into PFE. I look at it as if I had to really file a flight plan anyway. With PF2000, it acts like FSS while it's converting and tells you your flight plan is approved. I'm not sure how RC4 works, but I know with VoxATC you have to create a flight plan as well so that the program knows where you are flying from and to. It seemed cumbersome at first, but after a few times I got the hang of it and it's not much of a big deal now. The extra time is worth it for me.