FSX/FSX-SE? fsx glider type not experimental and right of way

[iriesoaringeagle 0]

when flying gliders (what i fly exclusively) atc calls out type experimental.. which is a minor detail until you try to land at a busy airport and atc announces 'go around" when your 30 feet off the ground on final..

gliders can't go around and should always have landing priority

how do you get fsx (steam edition) to recognize type glider and give you the proper landing priority? it gets a lil crazy trying to avoid a 737 flying up your word not allowed  and trying to clear the runway in time

[Chock 17,769]

To get ATC to use callsigns and aircraft types, you have to edit 'General' section of the config file for the aircraft. This is how it appears in an FSX aircraft.cfg file if there has been no type for ATC to use been added:

[General]
performance=
atc_type=
atc_model=
Category=airplane

You could change it to whatever you liked, but it will only use sound files which FSX has of course (but it does have a lot of them), Here's what you'd put for it to recognise you as a Boeing 727:

[General]
performance=
atc_type= BOEING
atc_model=B727
Category=airplane

Here is that section for a Glaser-Dirks DG808 glider:

[General]
atc_type=DG
atc_model=808s
Category = airplane

You can also put 'Silent' instead of a make such as 'Boeing' and ATC won't use 'Experimental' if there is no sound file for your particular model of aeroplane.

With regard to landing, you should be sticking to the kind of airports which expect slow approach speeds and GA aeroplanes, not ones where airliners with hundreds of people on board are operating, where ATC expects everyone to be maintaining 160 knots on approach. In FSX however, you have the luxury of being able to turn off AI traffic though, so that's an option you could try. In real life however, you would be regarded as endangering other aircraft if doing so and would probably be prosecuted.

Yes it is true that gliders have right of way over powered aircraft (except airships) and of course cannot go around, but in practical terms this does not grant one the right to make normal operations of other aircraft problematic. It's also worth noting that gliders can be hard to see, which is another issue; I once had a combat spread of two RAF Harrier fighter/bombers, which were practicing low level flight over the UK, pass either side of me doing about 500mph whilst I was flying an SZD 50-3 glider. Their wake vortex flipped my glider inverted when I passed through it, which caused me to lose several hundred feet of altitude when recovering from the stall that wake vortex induced, which is of course another reason it's probably not a great idea to be behind a 747 on finals in a lightweight glider. To this day I am absolutely sure those Harrier pilots never even saw me. I did report the occurrence to the CAA, since it was an air prox incident and you are required to do that, but nothing ever came of it and I never heard back from them about it. I'm fairly sure an airliner on approach at 160 knots might have difficulty spotting a glider too, and since most gliders don't have transducers (a lot of them don't even have a basic radio), it's unlikely you'd be on an airport's ATC radar scope either, which is yet another problem. Of course most of that doesn't matter in a flight sim, but it is probably why FSX isn't that great for gliding, since it does simulate typical real world operations of major airports. Condor and Silent Wings are much better flight simulators for that kind of thing.

Whilst in most countries, a glider is not actually prevented from operating in controlled airspace, a glider pilot does have to follow the rules of that airspace if operating there. Much of the time this is not a practical proposition, which is why gliders tend to fly chiefly in uncontrolled airspace and tend to operate from airfields where such operations are expected. I am fairly sure that if you lined up on the approach to a major airport and then contacted ATC, they would almost certainly tell you to get the hell out of there in reality, and there is a good chance the aviation authorities would want to talk to you too, as it would be a rather irresponsible thing to do given that most major airports expect aeroplanes on approach to be maintaining 140-160 knots from about ten miles out. I know the vast majority of gliders can easily attain these speeds in fast dives, but it's far more normal to be at around 65-70 knots on approach in a glider, and that is going to cause problems for spacing where airliners are landing, and it would certainly be deemed irresponsible to be doing that at a major airport. Most big airports in the UK I know don't even like little Cessnas and such operating from their runways and it's expensive to land such craft there too.

As I'm sure you know, glider circuits are usually flown by setting up a position based on a 4:1 glide angle to judge how far out to be when at circuit height (usually between about 800-1,000 feet at most gliding fields). Major airports are not going to let someone do that kind of thing. Moreover, unlike glider fields where there are tractors for the specific purpose of towing, a major airport will not be equipped to tow you off a runway easily, and they expect aircraft to only be on the runway for the minimum time necessary to line up for a take off or until they have slowed down enough to turn off and taxy clear of it, which of course a glider can't really do too easily, so all of that stuff means it's really not a practical propostion to be trying to land at a major airport in a glider, and unless there was a tow plane there, you'd probably not be able to fly it out of there either, because they certainly don't have winches to launch you lol.

[Captain Kevin 586]

19 hours ago, iriesoaringeagle said:

how do you get fsx (steam edition) to recognize type glider and give you the proper landing priority? it gets a lil crazy trying to avoid a 737 flying up your word not allowed  and trying to clear the runway in time

It's FSX ATC, you're asking for a bit much out of them. They aren't exactly smart enough to figure this out.