I was at Manchester yesterday listening to ATC. Tower will explicitly instruct an aircraft once airborne to contact Departure. The pilot will acknowledge that and then contact Dep. The instruction is not given before take-off.

 

Holy crap, is that a worldwide thing?  I'm in the US but never noticed that if they did.  Okay!

 

 

 

In Amsterdam, I believe it is an automatic hand off, you contact departure passing 2000 feet. Tower won't hand you off, it is part of the SID instructions and ATC assumes you change frequency yourself.
A few other places worldwide are using this same principle.

At some airports, tower will instruct you to contact departure as part of the take off clearance.

Finally, in most places, tower will clear you for takeoff and at an appropriate time once you are airborne, will instruct you to contact departure.

So, as you can see, there are 3 possible scenarios.

 

Okay, guys, that explains it.  I was a military controller years ago at some busy airports and we never did that...always '____ contact departure' a mile out except for single pilot fighter jets which were 'change to departure' on the runway.  I didn't know if it was a 'ProATC-X-ism' or if something had changed in ATC that I hadn't noticed.  Okay.

 

 

 

Constructive criticism is quite welcome, but it would be much better coming from those who are actually trying it and testing it.

 

Hi Pete, yes, I'm trying to evaluate it based on videos since there's no demo.  This thread, has done better than many to help.  People are keeping it on topic and not getting *too* emotional about it (thanks guys).  In terms of phraseology I am hearing some oddities but when you hear real world ATC, phaseology rules are broken for the sake of 1. brevity 2. we're human 3. making sure the pilot understood an instruction already given exactly, 4. an unusual or difficult situation 5. reminders.  Usually the long canned instructions, especially first contact, is by the book and everything else is less so.  I listen to Atlanta a lot and you hear "Reduce speed to one eight zero knots" said many ways.  Also RW things like "I need you at 5000 in 7 miles" or "I need you at 5000 ten miles prior to ALEXA" or "speed up your descent please"...clear instructions but breaking some rules here and there...nobody cares because it's quick and it works.  Occasionally, a tape is pulled and people sit in a room, arms folded across them, looking down at the floor, listening to what was said, make a few comments and move on.  I've heard some oddities in ProATC-X and, clearly, some vectoring at busy commercial airports where folks are nearly always vectored would be nice.  I'd like to see some of it tightened up but variability is cool and professional.  So far at least, ProATC-X sounds best to my ear...needs some clear work but, yeah, it's in the realm.

 

 

You do not tune to departure yourself. I repeat "do not!" Also you were listening to second hand ATC. You only tune to a frequency (any frequency, except one) "on the instructions of ATC" unless you are taking-off from an uncontrolled airstrip. The exception is 121.5! EHAM has very complex SID and STAR procedures and is a very busy airport so you probably missed the calls.

Part of RT procedure is to maintain a listening watch. That means not missing anything! The UK CAA RT exam has a 100% pass threshold. You are not allowed even to say "Say again" in the exam.

So Proatc is doing it wrongly.

 

All I can say is what I heard, and I listened to about 45 minutes straight of it, and I heard all the takeoff, and landing clearances, but not once a hand off to departure, or a pilots acknowledgement of one.

Aircraft are departing from 05L at EGCC today. I am 3 miles east of EGCC and see them soon after take-off.

 

Just heard the following when the Air Lingus Airbus was 2DME from MAN... "Shamrock 207, contact Scottish Control on one three four decimal four two five".

 

Scottish Control may be slightly confusing to non-Brits. It replaced Manchester Departure several years ago.

All I can say is what I heard, and I listened to about 45 minutes straight of it, and I heard all the takeoff, and landing clearances, but not once a hand off to departure, or a pilots acknowledgement of one.

 

You heard correctly. EHAM and (other airports) have been doing this for about 20 years now (AFAIK). Pilots change to DEP frequency without ATC instructing to do so.

 

It's mentioned on the SID plates: "Passing 2000, contact Schiphol DEP"

 

Here's a screen shot:

 

Just heard the following when the Air Lingus Airbus was 2DME from MAN... "Shamrock 207, contact Scottish Control on one three four decimal four two five".

 

 

It would be nice for it to do it this way or as an option. I think it's more ordinary.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen differently elsewhere.  ATC is different in different places.  Also, as controllers we were aware of things we weren't allowed to do but at busy times we bent the rules.  We couldn't give an airspeed to maintain on final but when things were tight it wasn't unusual to hear "best speed on final" (30 airplanes inbound and a helicopter needs an ILS...oh brother.)

"Speedbird 2578 contact Departure passing 2,000ft" is acceptable only if Speedbird 2578 has been given the departure frequency as part of the clearance delivery. The fact the a frequency is published or stored in your FMC does not mean that it is active.

It is not best practice because if there is any doubt that you may not have been given the frequency then you the crew will have to waste time asking for it at a critical stage in your flight.

Despite protestations and various quoted local practices the correct ATC terminology remains "Speedbird 2578 contact Departure on 123 decimal 6." So it is better that an ATC simulator follows the rule book and not some local practice I think!

Here is South Africa ATC informs us to contact Departure at a particular altitude as part of our clearance.

I think whats wrong with ATC addons is it tries to do everything for everybody. I think a better approach will be to create a proper ATC addon that works for just one country/FIR and sell that as an Addon and then expand from there. As an example create an ATC addon for french Airspace alone that only works within that airspace and when u have enough of such products you can merge them into a region specific Addon.

In ProATC-X is there any way to get the ATC chatter to turn off when it's talking to you and vice-versa?

In ProATC-X is there any way to get the ATC chatter to turn off when it's talking to you and vice-versa?

There is two levels of background chatter, ATC talking to AI aircraft and random real world background chatter (RealATC chatter package for example). Only on is playing at a time (please note that you need to turn of sim's voices or you will hear the sim's ATC duplicate the calls. This makes you also loose the sim's ATIS, which is a bit of a shame).

 

Both of he AI and real world chatter can be turned off. Also worth mentioning is, that you cannot speak to ATC while background chatter is playing, just like in the real world.

 

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As a side note, I have to agree with Onel said above. Each add-on aims to be the one to replace all add-ons. All current available add-ons have their issues and their strong points. Maybe doing one aspect and doing it well, would lead to interesting results.

 

I personally use one off 3 ATC add-ons based on what kind of flight I'm going to do. Works well for me, but is a bit expensive option.

When I started this thread, I had no idea what I was in for lol.

 

But without trying any of the options I've already learned an awful lot.