Cant remember when i last had a 100% successful VOX flight

[N1125Y 22]

... Co Pilot in my Little Bonanza, I keep the 6 pack on the seat, no room for Co Pilot ...... lolo

[Timmer 2]

I'm signing myself up for this, too. I just tried an IFR flight last night and did everything by the book, I believe. Still, after initializing Vox after loading the flight plan, I called up Clearance Delivery and requested clearance for my flight and got back the always entertaining, "Unable at this time." After a couple more requests with the same response, I opened up the Vox window and it was wanting me to call up Ground for some reason where it said the only thing it wanted to hear from me was a taxi request for local takeoff. Apparently, it didn't see I had a loaded flight plan. Bad enough. I then decide to take off without a flight plan. I wouldn't get IFR routing but I could still do an impromptu non-filed VFR flight, right? Everything was fine until I took off and the only thing tower and departure wanted from me was a request to land again. Apparently, they were also the only people in the USA manning ATC positions. I tried Center, I tried my destination airport's Approach, Tower and Ground at the respective times and could get no response. Also, TPA apparently had their ATIS shut down for the evening. I really wish Vox had a way of doing impromptu ATC. It seems it only ever activates those on your flight plan. What if you have an emergency landing somewhere else? What if weather is bad and need to go somewhere else? What if you don't want to file a flight plan for VFR? Even the standard ATC can do that. I'm sure it has something to do with ease of figuring out which frequencies to monitor but I'd like to see him add the ability to do that on-the-fly in real-time like all other ATC programs can do. Addendum: Also getting a taxi route across one runway and then getting "Unable at this time" responses when asking permission to cross it even though it's not in use is also a problem. Luckily, I don't think the only two active ATC people have enough time to fill out FAA paperwork for me ignoring their 'unable' ;)

[cbd80 3]

Timmer. VoxATC does allow for emergency landing situations and diversions to an alternate airport. The phraseology is listed in the VoxATC window when you press '0' (zero) during flight and select from the options available. You can also request deviations on your flight path due to weather. Have you run the Flight Plan Trainer utility so the voice recognition has the chance to learn your speech? Chris

[Timmer 2]

Hi, I've run it a lot and it recognizes my voice well enough. That's why I mentioned there were no options in '0' menu. As soon as I took off, the only frequency that would talk to me was tower for landing. I had a constant "Set your radio to XXXX" (tower). There were no other options for any other channels, voice or text. If you get off track of where it wants you, it can't just pick up on another frequency. I've had this problem before -- if you ignore one ATC, others won't be ready for you. I've had this happen when I switched over without confirming. I had to go back and confirm the switch before the new frequency would activate. It's good to hear emergency situations work, though! I'm thinking this program just doesn't like me even though I like it (at least in concept) :)

[Starrfoxx 0]

If you get off track of where it wants you, it can't just pick up on another frequency. I've had this problem before -- if you ignore one ATC, others won't be ready for you. I've had this happen when I switched over without confirming. I had to go back and confirm the switch before the new frequency would activate.

I had this problem last night. I was flying a practice flight from Detroit to Toronto using VoxATC to prepare for an upcoming Vatsim event. Using 5.63, I used the STAR/SID wizard to get my information entered. Everything at the departure airport went fine. I was cleared for my STAR and flew it like I should. I reached the transition point, got a text message to "fly flight plan" and that was the last I ever heard from ATC. I was never contacted to change the frequency to Center, and I flew my flight plan until I was practically flying around in circles over Toronto. I was never asked to change to Approach or anything. I even tried to contact Toronto. I managed to find the right frequency, but all I got was "Last aircraft, say again." It didn't want to listen to me. I went ahead and landed anyway, and I noticed that there were no AI traffic at all at the destination airport. Just for giggles, I disabled Vox and re-enabled it, and "boom" ... the AI traffic was there, and eventually I was able to get Toronto to speak to me. It was just too late by that point. I wonder if the STAR/SID caused a problem? Next time, I might try without using it and see what happens. Oh, and be careful with those emergency landing requests. One time it directed me to land my CRJ-200 at a small airport with turf. It was difficult to find.

[Timmer 2]

I tried again last night and once again it didn't see the flight plan loaded. I think something is getting hosed. It could also be related to the fact that FSX now crashes whenever I load a flight plan in the Free Flight menu before flying. Something is unhappy somewhere. The tale of FSX.

[Starrfoxx 0]

I tried again last night and once again it didn't see the flight plan loaded. I think something is getting hosed. It could also be related to the fact that FSX now crashes whenever I load a flight plan in the Free Flight menu before flying. Something is unhappy somewhere. The tale of FSX.

Did you install the 32 bit version of UIAutomationCore.dll in your main FSX folder? I was having crash problems too, until I did this. It seems to run okay now.

[Timmer 2]

I'll check. Maybe something installed it? I haven't had any crashes until a week ago with flight plans. I'll look into that, thank you.

[Starrfoxx 0]

Just to get back on topic with this thread, I made another flight from Sedona to Flagstaff in Arizona. ATC was fine for most of the flight (I had to repeat myself a few times to ATC, but not much). Flagstaff is not a big airport, but it sure did generate a lot of traffic. I had VoxATC set to 60%, and maybe that was the problem? I'm going to set it to 20% on my next flight and see what happens. I have the demo of FS Commander 9, but I can't get it to work and show the AI traffic. I'd like to see how it shows up on that program and post a snapshot of that also.

[Timmer 2]

Maybe there was a free-pancake fly-in that day? I keep my traffic at 50% but then again I haven't gotten Vox to get that far into the flight enough times to see if I get this problem. Although I have determined some of it is not Vox's fault. I can load a flight plan on a second flight just not the first time I use Free Flight (weird!) and on that second time, Vox notices the flight plan just fine.

[Starrfoxx 0]

Maybe there was an event going on in Flagstaff and nobody told me. The flight from Sedona to Flagstaff isn't very far. It took about an hour to get there, so I don't think it has anything to do with the flight time. Originally I thought it might have been with the first example, or maybe it was happening at heavy traffic airports. Now the amount of traffic looks about right, for 60%. The problem is that they are all grouped together, instead of being spread out and flying their flight plans. That's the one thing that really needs to be worked on with VoxATC and that is the AI schedules. If they were flying their schedules, then I probably wouldn't get this massive cluster frell in the sky. But since Vox doesn't understand AI schedules, it just generates the AI and they all seem to be taking off and having a pow wow in the sky.

[Starrfoxx 0]

Last night I had an enjoyable flight from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon, Arizona airport. I flew VFR and had no trouble with ATC or AI Traffic. Everything looked good. I had traffic set to 20% this time. I'll let you know if I have any other trouble. Hopefully turning down the traffic will be the trick.

[cbd80 3]

I never have the traffic past 50%, and that's far too much for small airfields.Less is better.Chris