Maintenance of my AI plane database is a never ending job. I have corrected hundreds of errors and issues over the years (many of which were only highlighted when I installed the FSReborn AI Lights Reborn Professional Edition), but I encountered another set this afternoon. During a flight from EGCN Doncaster Sheffield to EIDW Dublin in the PMDG 777F, I noted that an AI plane was referred to as "Giant 5219". In other words, it did not have "heavy" appended to it. Since I know that the GIANT call sign is for Atlas Air, I deduced that the plane in question was a 747, and therefore it should have included "heavy" in the ATC message. That made me decide to check all of the planes in my AI database that should have "atc_heavy=1" in the respective [fltsim.x] statements, and I discovered around 40 errors in total! Some entries (like the one for the aforementioned Atlas Air 747) did not have an "atc_heavy=" statement at all, but I also found several entries that were defined as "0" when they should have been "1", and also a few that were defined as "heavy"

There are still a few planes flying around without a callsign prefix, so the job is not yet complete (and probably never will be)

Edited November 6, 20205 yr by Christopher Low

Well it keeps you busy.🙂

It wouldn't bother me, however.

In some countries, the suffix 'heavy' or 'super' is only added to callsigns upon initial contact with ATSU.
The UK CAA is one such authority/administration that instructs aircraft to use such suffixes for the first call only. http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP413v21_6.pdf
In theory, you could have heard a subsequent tx to an ATSU, so 'heavy' would have been omitted from Giant 5219's call.

None of the add-on ATC programs, nor the default ATC, sound any where near good enough for me, so I just turn it off. Instead, where coverage permits, I use LiveATC.net.
Much more realistic sounding. Though I realise that's not a solution for everyone.
We all make changes to our sims to make them more appealing to us - if you have the time and the inclination to do so, then why not?

To be fair, the large majority of ATC messages that I hear during my travels are OK. It's just that I am somewhat "OCD" when it comes to even minor errors, so missing or muffled callsigns (and the "Bom-ba-deer" classic) tend to irritate me!

Edited November 6, 20205 yr by Christopher Low

Another sweep of the AI database this morning revealed that several Flightplan BGL files had errors.....

• Two flightplans were seven years old, and included AIA 737 models that I no longer have installed!
• Several flightplans included a handful of incorrectly assigned models
• One flightplan (with four planes) did not have any [fltsim.x] statements for the relevant repaints!
• One flightplan included a plane that should have been deleted

I look forward to discovering more errors over the next few days