Sidney Schwartz

Not available for X-Plane?

Thanks Dave.

Is there an option to request an LDA approach when one exists?

P2A uses, as much as possible, the real world frequencies at airports, and will display these for you a couple of different ways. That said, you will not hear any other pilots even if you are tuned to a working CTAF frequency. This is because, while you can have ai traffic in X-Plane, you cannot hear other pilots talking to each other or to ATC. (Maybe you can if you are using the stock X-Plane ATC, but I've never bothered to use that.) So, if you are flying in or out of an uncontrolled airport, and are tuned to the local CTAF frequency, you will not hear other pilots announcing their positions/intentions. And if you announce yours, no one will reply (which is actually realistic). Any non-native ATC program for X-Plane, as far as I know, will have the same limitation. All that said, there's no reason to limit your VFR flying to small, uncontrolled airports. You can fly VFR pretty much anywhere. If you are leaving, or arriving at, or transiting a controlled airport, you will have varying degrees of communication with the controllers there. It all depends, and it's all part of planning your flight...knowing who you are going to have to talk to, and when.

I've found really good videos on Youtube that explain all aspects of flying, including communicating with ATC. Search for something like "aviation tutorials". The exact procedures are going to vary according to which classes of airports and airspace are involved. None of it is particularly difficult...there's just lots of rules to remember. It's kept me interested for quite a long time. 🙂

Thanks, Mark. 👍

Is there some setting I can change so that I can hear my own voice in the headphones when I'm speaking?

I've been using the Sayit function of P2A, but would like to try using a mic. I have a little "El Cheapo Grande" desk mic, but it doesn't seem to have enough volume to work well. I have no problem with getting a decent headphone/mic combo. Any recommendations?

1. Yes 2. For the most part you follow your flight plan. You may be given an initial heading to fly after take off to intercept the first waypoint in your plan. The most likely time for you to be given vectors is on arrival. If your plan incorporates a STAR and/or instrument approach, you may be told to fly them as published--including heading and altitude changes--or you may be given vectors from the last waypoint in the STAR to final approach. If you are off course at any point ATC will point you in the right direction. There are a lot of variables, including how you configure the various options in P2ATC, so you don't always get the same thing. You should try the demo version, or at least browse throught the documentation, which is very thorough. P2ATC is so much more advanced that the default ATC that it may take you a while to get your head around it. 🙂

That seems to be a peculiarity of the G1000...none of the other GPS or FMC's I've seen require it. It's a nuisance, IMO. In any case, I always check the flight plan waypoints in the GPS/FMC with the waypoints in P2A...usually they'll be the same, but sometimes there are discrepancies that can cause P2A to think you're off course.

When requesting clearance you the clearance freq if there is one, the tower freq if there is no clearance freq, the ground freq if there is no tower freq, or center. If you click the Freq button to the right of the P2A map you should get a list of the frequencies for the airport. Or you can consult airport charts (try Skyvector.com).

I find that with 11.5 I now have to re-assign the AI aircraft every time I load XP. This was not the case with 11.4. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there a fix?

Aha. Thanks, Dave.

P2A is working fine, but I'm having a problem with setting up XP 11.50 for ai aircraft. When I go to the flight config screen to populate the ai traffic slots, the AI Traffic button is perpetually greyed out and can't be selected. Anyone else having this problem?

I'm mulling over whether to upgrade to 11.50 or not. Any reports of compatibility problems with P2A?

Nice videos...thanks for sharing them. I worded my question very badly. What I meant to ask was do I need to create and file a P2A flight plan for VFR flights, and the answer is no. 👍

Thanks much...I'll check them out.

I just got an X-Plane add-on that simulates having a GA charter business, so I'm doing more VFR flying. I'm familiar with the use of ATC in VFR but am not sure how to set up P2A to do what I want... 1. Fly VFR from DEP to DES airports (no class B or C) without flight following. 2. Be able to communicate as required with grnd and twr, and with local traffic at untowered airports. Announce pattern dep. and pattern position on landing. Is this possible? If so, how? What are my options?

Cool. Thanks, Dave.

Can wind gust info be included in the dep and dest weather info reported by P2A?

Huge improvement. 🤩

Super. What's the version number? Has it been released into the wild yet?

That being the case I don't think either traffic program is going to float your boat. Here's a link for the WT manual in case you want to have a look at it anyway... http://www.classicjetsims.com/downloads/WorldTraffic.pdf

It may be more accurate to say that P2A (and other atc programs) co-exist with TG and WT (and other traffic programs). Due to the way XP works internally, true integration of the two would be extremely difficult...at least that's what I've gathered. When using TG, P2A will give you traffic alerts and will issue a go-around if there is a plane on the runway. It will also have you hold for take off if there is an ai plane on short final, and will caution "wake turbulence" if you are departing right after an ai plane departs on the same runway. It's been too long since I've used WT for me to remember how P2A interacts with it. TG has an option to generate "synthetic ga." Can't say I've notice much in the way of ga traffic. Here's a link to the TG manual on the JustFlight web site. It will probably answer your questions better than I can... https://downloads.justflight.com/products/JFF003043/Traffic Global X-Plane manual.pdf P2A does not talk to ai aircraft at all. For realistic atc chatter I use this program... https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/x-atc-chatter-overview/ It's another expense but it does a very nice job. There may be freeware chatter programs but I've had no experience with them.

Yes, it has to be done every time you make a flight, even if you repeat the same flight I believe. I don't recall if I was getting traffic alerts from P2A with WT. That's about the only interaction you'll get with any traffic program. This is a one-time-and-done deal. By interactivity with ground traffic, I mean that P2A is unable to "see" ai traffic when you are taxiing, nor can it control ai traffic. So at busy airports you will frequently have ai planes taxiing right through you, no yielding for you, and otherwise completely ignoring you. As I said, I believe this is true of any traffic program you use. One other thing I just remembered. If you are on short final and there is an ai aircraft on the runway, P2A will instruct you to go around and then vector you back to the the approach, so that's another instance of interactivity. One thing I've been disappointed with with both TG and WT is that it ai traffic in the air is almost impossible to see. 99 times of 100 when I get a traffic alert, I'll never see the other plane. It has to be a near collision before the other plane becomes visible.