Prospective Buyer Questions

[RodgerC 58]

Dave, I have been reading posts on the forum and watching several of your videos on YouTube.  I'm pretty much new to the ATC thing.  This seems to be a fantastic program.  I have a couple of questions before I take the plunge.  I am currently using Radar Contact.  It's ok, but is lacking many things P2A has.  But I only fly GA airplanes.  Mostly Beechcraft and the like.  I'm concerned because I really enjoy using the Garmin GTN 750.  I currently use LittleNavMap as it will save my flight plan in .gfp so I can upload it to the GTN 750.  What I have been doing in order to use it with Radar Contact is creating a flight plan and saving it in the .pln and .gfp.  I upload the .pln to Radar Contact and then upload the same flight plan into the GTN 750.  Problem being is quite frequently the GTN 750 will lock the flight plan as it doesn't recognize a lot of the waypoints in LittleNavMap and so I have to go back and redo both plans in order to get them to match up with the same waypoints.  I imagine I would have to do the same thing using P2A also.  Not that big of a deal I guess.  But, since I only fly GA airplanes is this program a little too much for what I want to do?  Been flying FSX for a couple of years but without ATC.  Now I want to use ATC but not sure if I may be biting off more than I can chew.  Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Rodger

[kowen 64]

I juggled this one with another ATC program out there and do both VRF and IFR flying and only GA…this is the one I turn on the most. The text to speech is pretty good and I can generally make a request without having to read a script directly. You don’t have to use a menu either. It takes a bit of time, but once you get it going it flows much nicer than having to find keys in menus to make ATC request. It’s pretty sweet.

The other thing I like about it is that it can handle simple to complex very well. I fly real weather and if I am going from uncontrolled airport to another uncontrolled airport in perfect VFR conditions, I’ll turn it on, ask the unicom what the weather is, take off and maybe request flight following while enroute, maybe not. It obviously does IFR as well as you probably have experienced.

As to a flight planning, I generally build my flight plans using Sky Vector and you can cut and paste the string into P2A. I stopped importing into the GTN as it rejects duplicates waypoints and has been more of a pain, if you use the airways, you can input your route pretty quickly. Afterwards, I just let P2A export into P3D if I need to. LittleNavMap is a nice program, but I don’t use it too much anymore.

IMHO…well worth the money and Dave provides great support.

[RodgerC 58]

39 minutes ago, kowen said:

I juggled this one with another ATC program out there and do both VRF and IFR flying and only GA…this is the one I turn on the most. The text to speech is pretty good and I can generally make a request without having to read a script directly. You don’t have to use a menu either. It takes a bit of time, but once you get it going it flows much nicer than having to find keys in menus to make ATC request. It’s pretty sweet.

The other thing I like about it is that it can handle simple to complex very well. I fly real weather and if I am going from uncontrolled airport to another uncontrolled airport in perfect VFR conditions, I’ll turn it on, ask the unicom what the weather is, take off and maybe request flight following while enroute, maybe not. It obviously does IFR as well as you probably have experienced.

As to a flight planning, I generally build my flight plans using Sky Vector and you can cut and paste the string into P2A. I stopped importing into the GTN as it rejects duplicates waypoints and has been more of a pain, if you use the airways, you can input your route pretty quickly. Afterwards, I just let P2A export into P3D if I need to. LittleNavMap is a nice program, but I don’t use it too much anymore.

IMHO…well worth the money and Dave provides great support.

Kowen, thanks for all the good info.  I'm going to give the 10 day trial a go and see how it goes.  I've been using Radar Contact and Voice Attack and it's worked out pretty well, but would like to be a bit more realistic.  Thanks again for the help.

[Dave-Pilot2ATC 864]

Rodger,

The problem of not being able to import .pln files would seem to be an issue for the Flight1 folks to focus on.  But as you say, it's not that big of a deal to make the corrections or enter the flight plan manually if needed. 

I like flying GA jets both VFR and IFR.  When I started P2A, I was flying the stock Baron 58 in X-Plane and P3D.  I also now fly the airliners as well.  In my opinion, Pilot2ATC adds a lot to all the possible scenarios....but obviously I'm biased.

I suggest you read through the latest version of the User's Guide to get a feel for what P2A can do.  Then if that seems of interest, take the 10 day trial when you have enough time to fly for much of the time and see for yourself.

Thanks for your interest.

Dave

[kneighbour 32]

The importing of the flight plan into the GTN-750 is a real pain for me also. The first issue is that P2A does not remember the path for the GTN files (only fms), so you have to find the path each time. Another problem is that the GTN uses a pretty old version of the Navigraph database (or whatever it uses). So the GTN has a big problem importing flight plans. As you say, it locks a lot of stuff - so in the end it is not worth doing the export/import shuffle. This is a problem with the GTN, and not with P2A, of course.

One thing I HAVE found to be very useful in P2A is this...

- generate the plan in P2A. I use autoplan, then tweak the procedures if I have to. Top feature. P2A is worth it just for this.

- load the GTN and then enter the plan manually. This is helped enormously as the SID/STAR and Arrivals are listed at the bottom of the P2A screen. This way I can usually find a close equivalent plan in the GTN that works.

I then change the Config in P2A to allow for lateral deviation of about 20nm. You need to do this as often the plan in the GTN is a bit off from the P2A plan, and as you are actually flying from the GTN, you will get deviation messages from ATC. The 20nm (usually 1nm) seems good enough.

It is a good system.

[RodgerC 58]

Well I downloaded P2A trial version.  Just flew some transition with ATC.  Most excellent!!!!   However I have 2 small problems that I can't figure out. I thought I was doing everything as the manual said, but obviously I'm doing something wrong.  First I am flying with a triple monitor setup.  Second, I cannot keep P2A on top even though I am in the windowed mode, and have the box highlighted "on top".  Third, everytime I click on anything in p2a,  FSX is paused.  This is an incredible program.  I will be buying it probably in the next couple of days.  Will be a great Christmas and birthday present.

[DrumsArt 270]

10 hours ago, C130FE said:

Well I downloaded P2A trial version.  Just flew some transition with ATC.  Most excellent!!!!   However I have 2 small problems that I can't figure out. I thought I was doing everything as the manual said, but obviously I'm doing something wrong.  First I am flying with a triple monitor setup.  Second, I cannot keep P2A on top even though I am in the windowed mode, and have the box highlighted "on top".  Third, everytime I click on anything in p2a,  FSX is paused.  This is an incredible program.  I will be buying it probably in the next couple of days.  Will be a great Christmas and birthday present.

To prevent FSX from being paused you must untick the second option in the FSX General Parameters menu "pause on task switch". In the FSX.cfg file the parameter is "PAUSE_ON_LOST_FOCUS =", it must be set to zero.

However you will lose the sound in FSX, you will have to click again on FSX window to have the sound.

If you want to avoid this problem, the solution I think is to run P2ATC on another computer over a network.

Regards,

 

[bjwoody61 3]

As far as the sound goes, Flight 1 has a utility called SoundStream. This solves the problem of no sound in FSX when switching to other apps.

[RodgerC 58]

1 hour ago, bjwoody61 said:

As far as the sound goes, Flight 1 has a utility called SoundStream. This solves the problem of no sound in FSX when switching to other apps.

Thank you sir.  Appreciate that.  Only problem is I have FSX:SE.  Only works with boxed version.  Hope they get FSX:SE incorporated into that soon.

Edited December 16, 2017 by C130FE
Update after going to Flight 1 website

[bjwoody61 3]

I have FSX-SE and it works just fine

 

[DrumsArt 270]

3 hours ago, bjwoody61 said:

As far as the sound goes, Flight 1 has a utility called SoundStream. This solves the problem of no sound in FSX when switching to other apps.

Yes, I have it, there were some problems with some aircrafts like FsLabs and so...

I finally had little use given the lack of support at the time (my experience with this product was not satisfactory at all) ... Now I'm on P3Dv4, so no more problem with the sound.

Regards,