Jarkko

Hello, I just asked from Navigraph about the current situation and the the response is, that they plan to add the support, but no timeline yet. This is the one thing holding me back at the moment, so I hope this will soon be sorted. Keep up the good work!

There is two levels of background chatter, ATC talking to AI aircraft and random real world background chatter (RealATC chatter package for example). Only on is playing at a time (please note that you need to turn of sim's voices or you will hear the sim's ATC duplicate the calls. This makes you also loose the sim's ATIS, which is a bit of a shame). Both of he AI and real world chatter can be turned off. Also worth mentioning is, that you cannot speak to ATC while background chatter is playing, just like in the real world. --- As a side note, I have to agree with Onel said above. Each add-on aims to be the one to replace all add-ons. All current available add-ons have their issues and their strong points. Maybe doing one aspect and doing it well, would lead to interesting results. I personally use one off 3 ATC add-ons based on what kind of flight I'm going to do. Works well for me, but is a bit expensive option.

You heard correctly. EHAM and (other airports) have been doing this for about 20 years now (AFAIK). Pilots change to DEP frequency without ATC instructing to do so. It's mentioned on the SID plates: "Passing 2000, contact Schiphol DEP" Here's a screen shot:

Listen, you can come and visit me anytime. We can go to my local international airport and see if it never happens EDIT: Look up SID charts for EHAM. What do they say? "Passing 2000, contact Schiphol DEP".

Just to repeat, ProATC isn't instructing you to change frequency, it is just a reminder what the departure frequency is. The clearance says that you should contact departure only after you are airborne. EDIT: At 43min 40s you will hear the clearance. Please also note when the co-pilot contacts departure. https://youtu.be/wWsiSXpF-es

I don't think it has ever done that. The wording in takeoff clearance is: "... When airborne, contact departure ..." So while you are on the runway, you should stay with the tower frequency.

Sorry for a late reply, I've been busy testing out AirHauler 2 I noticed that Navigraph has AIRAC data for Eaglesoft so this means that you could have matching data in both the aircraft and ATC. Couple of options come to mind. The key is that you do not need to export a flight plan out of ProATC to the aircraft. Here are the options: 1. Fully manual: copy/paste the route from SimBrief to ProATC and enter the route manually into to FMS 2. Fully automatic: Export fsx or squwkbox format out of SimBrief and import it to ProATC, The SimBrief supports exporting in Citation format, then you could also use it. Those are the main ways to get a flight plan sorted. The third option for some selected aircrafts would be to create a flight plan in ProATC and have ProATC export the flight plan to the aircraft, but I rarely use this option as I prefer to enter the routes manually, because at the same time I make sure that a correct route gets generated.

As for 5 seconds to great a flight plan, let's compare steps required to import for example the following real world route ESSA ARS N623 TEKVA DCT ESEBA ENGM 1) ProATC 1. Copy the route string 2. Open new flight plan window 3. Paste in the copied route string 4. Enter flight level 5. Enter primary alternate DONE 2) PF3 1. Copy the route string 2. Paste the route string into simbrief/vroute/PFPX/FSC 3. Convert the route string to one of the fpl formats that PF3 supports 4. Save the flight plan to your computer. 5. Open new flight plan by browsing your computer for the exported flight plan you created in the previous step 6. Enter flight level 7. Set transition altitudes for your origin and destination airports 8. Find SID plates for your origin and enter in (or verify) the SIDs available for each runway (and altitude restrictions) 9. Find STAR plates for your destination and enter in (or verify) the STARs available for each runway (and altitude restrictions) 10. Find approach plates for your destination airport and come up with a Minimum FAF altitude for your destination airport 11. Enter alternate airport DONE --- So what are the main differences for me? - With ProATC, you do not need external tools to convert real word routes to a format that the ATC program understands. - You need to input far less data into ProATC => much faster to get into air.

It depends where you operate. ProATC normally vectors you from STAR exit to the approach, which works fine in Europe (you can also force ProATC to assign approach transitions to stay safe when flying to airports with high terrain, which is a real life saver). So to answer the question, yes, ProATC does vectoring and speed adjustment, but... The US STAR structure is somewhat problematic for ProATC. This is because the AIRAC data provided for ProATC doesn't contain info such as "expect vectors after xxx" (even though this info can be found on the plates). So flying the full STAR gives excellent to OK results in Europe, but not equally good results in the US. AFAIK this has been listed as a known issue and hopefully resolved in one of the future releases. In short, ProATC would start vectoring you sooner off the STAR. Then again, the early vectoring would cause problems if there is high terrain around the airport and this is why it's not a fast fix to do right.

It's the other way around. ProATC rarely vectors you. ProATC reads all the SIDs/STARs, approaches and transitions from the AIRAC data (provided by Navigraph and Aerosoft). Not all ATC add-ons have this level of support and this is why these products mostly do vectoring. To be honest, I know ProATC users that have requested, that ProATC would do more vectoring than it does currently. If you prefer vectoring, RC4 is hard to beat in my book.

This is one of the reasons, I wished that the Avsim ATC challenge thread would have received more video submissions. Would have made comparing a bit easier. I have been planning for a very long time to do a side by side comparison video of the ATC add-ons that I own (same weather, same flight plan, and so on), but haven't had the time to do so yet as it would require many hours to fly and couple more to edit all the videos together. ProATC and FSC are 100% compatible together, when you know what to do (Both programs must have the same AIRAC cycle imported. If AIRAC doesn't match, nothing works. Same goes for any other add-on that uses AIRAC). Options to use FSC with ProATC: 1) Export fsx flight plan format out FSC and import it to ProATC or 2) Take copy of the FSC route string. Add DCT between any route waypoints that are not connected by airways in the route. Then import it using the ProATC copy/paste import. So for example FSC route: ESSA ARS N623 TEKVA ESEBA ENGM would have to be modified like to a format found below. Notice the add DCT between TEKVA and ESEBA. For ProATC, you need to add DCT between any waypoints that are not connected with an airway. ESSA ARS N623 TEKVA DCT ESEBA ENGM The above also happens the be the format eurofpl.eu uses for real world flight plans. There aren't many ATC products, where you can take a real world flight plan string (from flightaware for example) and paste it in. Flight plan importing doesn't get much faster than that. ProATC is one of them. To see it in action, here is my (very) old video (if you have time to watch the whole video, you will see me also use FSC): Flight plan importing starts at 20min 36s: EDIT: I may need to do a 2016 version of the video. The old one is way too long and lacks structure.

Why would there be? In ProATC, you first have to file a flight plan, just like in the real world. Origin and destination airport, route, flight level and so on. For convenience, the ProATC flight plan window also has a button to auto generate a route for you, if you do not have a route from an external flight planner/dispatch. Is the auto route generation option what is confusing you? After you have filed your flight plan (emphasis on the word plan), ATC takes over and tells you what you can and can't do. A flight plan isn't a list of instructions that ATC must follow to the letter.

Except that these values are not static in the real world. SIDs/STARs get added/removed, new versions of the SID/STAR get published. Once this happens, PF3 will tell you to fly SID/STAR that isn't in your aircraft's database. You will have to check all your input values after each AIRAC cycle update (28 days) if you fly with current AIRAC. I don't know where this misconception comes from. It's either the pilot or dispatch that files in the flight plan. ATC can then re-route you if need be (and if it doesn't but your flight into danger). The misconception is, that you would always include SID/STAR in your flight plan. You would do this in the US and Germany, but in most of Europe, you would not include SID/STAR in the fpl. SID/STAR would be assigned by the ATC at flight time (dispatch does include the SIDs/STARS in the OFP for planning purposes).

For me PF3 isn't so much an ATC program, but a mini game/scripting engine. In PF3, you control ATC and not the other way around, where ATC controls you. For example, you will have to tell what are the possible names for SIDs/STARs you have at a given airport (also transition altitudes and so on). Only then it will know what can be assigned. After that, it will still have no knowledge how a given SID/STAR should be flown correctly. If you end up flying in the completely wrong direction, PF3 won't correct you, because it has no idea you are doing something wrong. This is the level of SID/STAR support vololiberista is referring to (or at least that is my experience). --- As for the original question: At some point, you will hopefully try flying online. When you find your self looking for a tool to train for flying online, then I would suggest VoxATC. It also has it's problems, but you learn to speak to ATC and it has full support for SIDs/STARs and is eager to vector you for the approach. Very dynamic in nature, just like online flying. Problems with VoxATC are expensive voice sets, frequency ping pong and flying around high terrain. Pilot2ATC might also be a option, but I don't own it so I can't say if would work in this situation.

Some AIRACs cycles have little changes between them, while other AIRAC have huge changes. For example my local airports (EFHK) SID handling got changed completely this year (or was it last year). It has very little in common with the old version (and the change was not for the better). Those values are not exact (I personally use half of the value, that I see the aircraft's automation use). Maybe better value over descent rate (feet per minute) would be angle of descent, but we will see if the name of the options will stay the same or change. The reason is, that the required descent rate is dependent on your ground speed. You have to vary your rate of descent (fpm) as your ground speed changes.

These are are "set and forget" values that you set for your aircraft inside ProATC before the flight (Data > Aircraft). In your flight plan, you then select which aircraft you are going to use for the flight. The values stored for the aircraft are then used to calculate the TOD for the flight. I have create a single generic profile to use with A320 and B738 and another when flying with the MD-11.

I use -800fpm below FL100 and -1300fpm above FL100. It gives me a very early descent (which I prefer), when flying with the A320 or B738.

Can you please post a log on the support forum (instructions under "Requesting Support"). Your account is now active and you have full access to the forums. The profile for the aircraft in ProATC's config has to be conservative. If you enter -2400fpm as average descent rate (above FL100), you will have to dive like mad. As for AIRAC, it's vital that the aircraft and ATC have the same AIRAC cycle. Otherwise the option is to have the ProATC moving map open and fly in heading mode to match they waypoints in the AIRAC version imported into ProATC. EDIT: I was just informed that Navigraph might not have AIRAC for the GTN750. That would be a bit of a shame really.

Thanks for correcting me! I meant to say: about copy/paste import NAT track waypoint from other sources than PFPX (I know I said PFPX, but that was a typo). First think you need to do is add a DCT between NAT track waypoints and the ProATC's coordinate format was different than the source (I don't know which), that some of the ProATC users were using. EDIT: I have to search the forum for the right coordinate format, so it will be easier to give examples.

If you get "negative" as a reply, you are already on the arrival or approach phase of the flight (where ProATC will deny DCT requests). If it happens too often, please post a log on the forum. There usually has been a good explanation what has caused the missed waypoint (I usually get a missed waypoint once every 80 flight or so => about once a year).

ProATC uses a different route naming for coordinate waypoints, than PFPX (more info on the support forum). If you enter they waypoints in ProATC compatible format (and don't let ProATC to autocalculate) the route, you should be fine. Other option would be to export SquwkBox3 format out of PFPX and then import it into ProATC. If you do so, please double check the resulting ProATC flight plan, because sometimes PFPX adds departure and arrival waypoints, that shouldn't be in the plan (this is the reason why I import all of my routes using copy/paste flight plan import). --- As for missed waypoints. I does happen from time to time. This is why it's good to have the ProATC's moving map open during the flight. As already mentioned, requesting DCT should get you out of trouble.

I flew challenge number 3 with ProATC. I took the route (SPAZZ3 ZAPAA DATME SNDIA3) and flight level (FL320) from this flight: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/GJS4789/history/20160212/1815Z/KDEN/KABQ --- SHORT VERSION: Success from gate to gate --- Then the long version: BEFORE TAKEOFF Clearance delivery gave me runway 07 and a different SID that in the real world flight. This is why I ended up requesting runway 08. Runway change was accepted and the assigned SID was SPAZZ3 with ZAPAA transition (which now matched the flightaware flight). Ground cleared me to push & start, but as push back direction wasn't mentioned, I accidentally pushed back so I was nose to nose with an AI aircraft (I should have pushed back facing west, not east?). Taxi instructions were BS -> M to runway 08. CLIMB OUT: Nothing to report. Cleared altitudes matched the altitudes on the plates. CRUISE: Smooth. No radio ping pong. ARRIVAL I got an early descent clearance. After the TOD, I was cleared to fly the SNDIA3 STAR with DATME transition (runway 26). The early descent got me worried as there is high terrain below the path of the STAR. Lucky for me, the altitude clearances matched the altitude limits on the plates => I was safe the whole way down. APPROACH I was cleared to fly the RNAV-Y runway 26 approach with CADAT transition. This turned out to be an exciting arrival as it goes near high terrain. Will have to fly to KABQ more often! The approach was good until I started messing around with the autopilot too much (not ATC's fault). Flying at 02:00 AM while suffering from a flu, isn't as easy as it seems The approach ended up with a very hard manual landing. TAXI IN Cleared via taxiway A to gate G 8. --- If you want to see me do the flight, you can find the twitch version here (unfortunately youtube upload failed, just like my flying today): http://www.twitch.tv/virtualfreightdog/v/44175314 EDIT: The Youtube upload seemed to have worked. Better quality version should be ready in couple of hours (ATC portion starts from around 8min mark):

A quick question, as there is (currently) no AIRAC support, how do you guys keep your approaches (for example) up to date with the real world? Or does it make any difference? Can I shoot RNAV approaches or VOR approaches in any way I like?

VoxATC and ProATC already have this (altitude restrictions and all), so it can be done, and has been done for quite some time. I wanted to do the same with PFE. Read the data from the updated AIRAC and setup my PFE flights automatically. Unfortunately I found out that the PFE file format was proprietary (as I contacted the developer), so at that time it wasn't doable with PFE. Maybe PF3 allows these values to be imported from an external program?

Not again with this... This is user configurable (like you already know as it's been pointed out multiple times).