Any Way to Interact with ATC via Key Presses?

[Kronovan 14]

I'm a n00b to the full X-Plane 11 experience, having just upgraded the demo to the full game on Monday.  I must admit, coming from FSX:SE I miss the ability to respond to ATC by key presses alone. Part of the reason for that is my simming PC setup, where I always have a gaming keypad readily accessible while my mouse is somewhat awkwardly placed in the center of my desktop. So having to mouse click ATC options and responses is less than ideal for me.

I'm wondering if I overlooked something though and if there might actually be some way in-game to have it use key presses instead?  I looked under keyboard mappings last night, but only the default [Return] key for displaying the ATC menu is available. I do have Radar Contact 4.3 and I'm aware that you can buy a plugin to make it work with XP, but from what I've read it can be broken by game updates and can be tricky to setup; not to mention it'll cost me an additional $30 CDN. As well, I'm only ever configured RC3 for a nephew - never been a user. I'm fine with the in-game ATC; just would prefer to use it via key presses.

So...I'm wondering if anyone here has found a way or some solution to achieve this?

Edited October 3, 2019 by Kronovan

[Bulva 98]

Try with 124thATC. It also mainly requires a mouse to operate, but a few basic commands can be assigned to the keys (joystick, etc).

[Bjoern 1,163]

No keyboard support for either the default or 124th ATC.

[Bulva 98]

For example, you can assign the Read Back command (the most commonly used). 😉
I also miss assigning everything to keys.
I reported to as a remark for future 124thATC updates.
 

[Kronovan 14]

Many thanks for the replies. I'm going to take a look at 124thATC. I've also starting looking more into the Radar Contact plugin, to see if it's evolving and improving over what I've read. I'm likely going to have to change my PC setup for XP11 and dig out my old CH Products flight yoke, which will allow me to re-position my mouse on the right.

My struggles with GA flight sims, is that I also play a lot of combat sims (IL-2 CloD, IL-2 BoS, Strike Fighters 2, DCS) and having my desktop setup with my stick on the right with mouse center works best for those. As well, those sims all take a keyboard intensive approach to comms, which I've compensated for by having a map-able gaming keypad conveniently placed near my throttle quadrant. I just find that being able to interact with ATC via keypad like in FSX feels more familiar to me, even though I'm talking to a controller instead of a wing man. And I definitely fly better with a joystick.

I don't know, I guess I'm a bit of a creature of habit.  :)

Edited October 5, 2019 by Kronovan