Sidney Schwartz

I was using World Traffic 3 and now prefer Traffic Global. World Traffic 3 has to generate flight plans for the ai aircraft prior to each flight. This can take several minutes and gets old pretty quickly. With Traffic Global you're ready to go with no delay. You will get traffic alerts from P2A once you set up XP properly, which takes but a couple of minutes and the Traffic Global docs explain how to do this. AI traffic will also show up on your planes TCAS and in the P2A map window. Traffic Global will supposedly reserve a parking spot for you at your destination airport, meaning no ai will park there, but this feature doesn't seem to work very consistently. As far as I know there is no interactivity between P2A and ground ai traffic with any any add-on traffic program, but I could be mistaken.

Dave has done an amazing job with giving P2ATC users the tools to manipulate taxiways and parking and other aspects of airport design. In spite of this, XP's lack of consistency frequently causes frustration. Many airports files contain all sorts of errors that make it difficult for ai planes to taxi, for correct assignment of parking spots, etc., etc. Part of the problem is that user modifications to airports ("Gateway airports") are apparently incorporated into release versions of XP with little or no regard to a consistent application of rules regarding things like parking gate properties, or even if parking gates are present at all. If there's a solution to this I have no idea what it might be. 😬

You can also request any approach you want if you don't like the one you were given. I usually wait until I get the "expect the X approach to the Y runway" and then make the request.

1. Check your XP to see if TG has assigned the "End" key for this function. It's supposed to, but in my case it hadn't so I did it myself. Of course you can assign any key you wish. 2. The active com radio needs to be tuned to any frequency used by your destination airport..., ground, tower, approach, whatever. Presumably you should also be close enough to the airport so that it's the only one using those frequencies. I wait until I've been handed off to Approach, just to be on the safe side. 3. Press "End" (or whatever key you've assigned) and you should get a verbal and/or text message telling you the active runway and the designation of the parking spot reserved for you. You need to have "Enable text ATC messages" and/or "Enable verbal ATC messages" check on your XP sounds configuration page. 4. Click the Info button on the far right side of your P2ATC screen, then make sure it's displaying the airport you want. Click the Runways & Gates tab and in the Gates drop-down list select the parking spot you want. It's obviously important that TG and P2ATC are "seeing" the same parking spots at your airport. I've been using P2ATC's Taxi Maint function to import the destination airport if it hasn't already been imported. This way TG and P2ATC should be in synch, so to speak. At least I think so.

From the release notes: v1.0.8916 A new feature has been added to make it easier to find out what runways are in use by Traffic Global for the AI. A new pseudo-ATC call has been added, default hotkey "End", which will use your current active radio frequency (i.e. COM1/COM2 as selected) to find the nearest airport listening on that frequency and tell you the current wind, anticipated arrival and departure runways (arrival if you are airborne, departure if you are on the ground), and will reserve and clear a parking slot for you if you are airborne. Although this is done is pseudo-ATC speech IT IS NOT A FULL ATC SYSTEM 🙂 So when approaching your destination Traffic Global will reserve a parking space for you. You can then instruct P2A to direct you to that space after landing. Pretty nice. I've only tried it a couple of times so far, but it seems to work. The usual caveat with anything having to do with ai traffic applies: it only works if the taxi routes and parking spots at the aiport are set up correctly.

Thanks, Dave. 😀

I don't do much VFR flying and couldn't find much about it in the P2A manual, so I can use some tips. In this particular instance I'll be departing an uncontrolled airport and landing at a controlled airport. I won't need ATC except at the end when I have to contact tower for landing permission and instructions. So how do I set this up in P2A? Do I have to file a flight plan in P2A even though I'm not contacting center to open it? Do I need to get VFR clearance before taking off? Please help the stoopid person. 🤡

Thanks all for the feedback. I've decided it's not worth the bother. I'll just have to save up the quatloos for a new computer.

I have the opportunity to create a network and use a second PC. Would I be able to run P2A on the second computer to take some of the load off the computer running XP? I'm completely word not allowed about networking, so please keep the answers simple. 🙄

This is more of a RW procedure question than a P2ATC question. I make my initial contact with tower and am told "continue approach X, contact tower when established on final." At what point do I consider myself established on final? Localizer captured. Localizer and glideslope? Disance X from runway?

Seems to work fine, but there's something I think needs to be added. Right now the only way to report your vfr position is to identify a navaid (or landmark?) that you're over. Sometimes there's nothing of any significance to be over, if you take my meaning. It would be better to be able to report "XX miles [direction] of airport, landing rwy Z." It would be great if P2A would calculate the distance and direction for you.

Haven't done any VFR flights in ages, but for some reason have gotten the itch to do so (my doctors says there's a spray for that 😮). There's not much info on VFR in the docs and I'm trying to figure out what the VFR capabilities of P2A are. For starters, can I fly VFR without filing a flight plane and/or without flight following, but still be able to tune unicom and announce my position and intentions?

Using with XP-11. Is there an easy way to tell if I've already imported the taxi ways/parking for any particular airport?

As far as P2A is concerned, the file plan you "filed" in PA2 is the only one that exits, and it will expect you to follow it exactly. P2A has no idea what you have entered in your plane's FMC. Makes sense...in the real world you also file a flight plan with ATC, and ATC cannot look over your shoulder at your FMC while you're flying and tell you if there's a discrepancy. I always fly using an FMC, so I have to make sure what I program into the FMC matches the flight plan I filed witih P2A. It's just a normal part of flight perparation. It's also important to make sure that P2A and your plane's FMC are using the same nav data.

Are you exporting your flight plan from P2A to whatever format/folder the DA62 requires? Some planes use whatever the native format of the sim is, others use proprietary formats. The Majestic Dash-8 Q400, for example, uses a flight plan format unique to that plane. Fortunately some clever person wrote a little program that converts flight plans to this format. Seems like something Majestic really dropped the ball on.

Thanks. I eventually figured that out. Works great!

Should have mentioned that I'm flying XP-11 now and not FSX. 🙄

I have AS for FSX set up that way, and it works fine, but as far as I can understand from the (not very good) instructions for the XP version of AS, AS sends writes wx data to METAR.rwx in the XP root folder. Is that right? If not, where's the XP that folder I need to point P2A to?

I just installed ActiveSkyXP. The weather data in the XP Flight Configuration/Weather setup screen matches what ActiveSkyXP is reporting, but the wx reported by P2A is different. I have P2A configured to use "Sim Weather" and the location set to the XP root folder. Am I missing something? Thanks for your assistance.

Thanks for posting that. I just installed X-ATC-Chatter and created folders for US/Canada and Europe. Works like a charm. 😃

If I want to request a different arrival runway, what is the "window of opportunity" during which I can do that and have it approved?

Sent.

OK, getting there. On this last flight I was able to request a higher altitude and have it approved. I was assigned R22 for arrival and tried requesting R12. The request was made but I got no reply from ATC. I'd attach the log if I could figure out how to do that on this forum.

Thanks, Dave. I did read about SayIt+ in the docs, but it fell out of my brain when I needed it. 🙄

1. Is is possible to request direct to a waypoint, or request a different altitude, using SayIt instead of the microphone? I can see the requests for these things in the grammer help, but I can't see a way to add the name of the waypoint or the altitude. 2. How do I declare a missed approach?