landning information

Patrik Lundberg 1835 · Mon May 05, 2008 9:37 am

Hi

Just wondering if there is an easy and good way to find out which runway is used for landing at your destination during an early stage of your descent. I think that you get that information a little bit to late in FS9.

Also wondering if there´s a way to reduce the number of go-arounds at airports with a lot of traffic, for example editing files in FS or something like that without decrasing the traffic density from 100%

And the last question, is there any ugrades for FS9 ATC where you can get ATC to tell you to maintain certain speeds during approach and telling you which intersection to turn off the runway after landing. for example: "Giant 515 heavy, turn left at Bravo, contact ground on xxx.xx" or "Giant 515 heavy descent and maintain 4000 ft, maintain 220

I know I´m a pain in the ass, but if there´s any way to solve this problems the it´ll all be worth it

Kind regards

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:02 am

Patrik:

First off, not sure if you are familiar with it, but if you will use Radar Contact, that is the only other ATC program besides using Vatsim. RC will help you in several areas that you have mentioned.

As for the go-arounds, I think it sounds like you could have multiple bgl files in your system which basically create duplicate flights. However, if that is not the issue, then you may want to look into using Ultimate Traffic or some other traffic add on that is available. It boasts of reduced go arounds in the airport environment. Another way is simply go into FS9 and reduce your traffic slider down to a lower value.

Another note on the weather issue. If you use Active Sky, you can stay abreast of the weather situation during your entire flight. Active Sky also has its own built in ATIS that you can go to at anytime in your flight. Just a bit unrealistic, but you can get ATIS for KORD while still in the EU Region. It will give you general atis for current conditions, but then will give you the local ATIS for your landing airport you have filed.

As for the final turn instructions on the taxi way issue? I have no idea how to fix that one. Live vatsim has been the only way I have seen anything different. Not even RC will tell you to turn on a certain taxiway.

To be honest with you, most of the time I was flying real life, they will either tell you "Turn next taxiway" or "Turn off when able" I have only a few times ever been told to turn on a certain taxiway, and that was usually because they had a conflict that they did not want me adding to.

Oh, and on your decent and speed issue, RC will definitely help you on that. If you exceed 250kts below 10000, it will let you know by telling you to reduce speed. Also at some airports, RC will even reduce you to 210kts when certain conditions exist. It's not a bad program and there are more options on it than I ever use, so you might go check it out.

Hope all that helps you.

Post by **thansson** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:17 am

One word of advice:
Do not use FS9 ATC! It is horrible, unrealistic and just a major pain in the @!@#$!

In order of preference, this is what I use for ATC:

VATSIM - By far the most realistic environment, the only drawback is that coverage is a bit hit and miss...
Radar Contact - Great little add-on that provides a decent replacement for the default FS9 ATC. As with any AI, it is not foolproof but coupled with Ultimate Traffic, it provides the most realistic off-line environment. It is a little pricey ($44) and only ships on CD but I think it is worth it.

Patrik Lundberg 1835 · Mon May 05, 2008 11:34 am

As for the final turn instructions on the taxi way issue? I have no idea how to fix that one. Live vatsim has been the only way I have seen anything different. Not even RC will tell you to turn on a certain taxiway.

To be honest with you, most of the time I was flying real life, they will either tell you "Turn next taxiway" or "Turn off when able" I have only a few times ever been told to turn on a certain taxiway, and that was usually because they had a conflict that they did not want me adding to.

Sorry, I wrote it the wrong way, what I meant was if there was any way that ATC will tell me to turn off the runway for example "Giant 515 heavy, turn left at next insersection". I saw a video from FS9 on YouTube where the ATC controller told the user aircraft to do a left turn off the runway. Is that kind of phraseology a part of RC perhaps?

Gary · Post by **Gary** » Mon May 05, 2008 1:40 pm

I agree w/ everything Bryan mentioned in his post--I use ultimate traffic and find w/ a little editing it can offer traffic almost as realistic as real life.
Also I find the atis feature of Active sky to be quite realistic. As long as we are in contact w/ any acars ground station we may call up atis, metar, and pireps for any other station worldwide so we can keep abreast of changing wx conditions as we progress on our flight in the real world.

Gary

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Mon May 05, 2008 2:56 pm

Patrik Lundberg 1835 wrote:
As for the final turn instructions on the taxi way issue? I have no idea how to fix that one. Live vatsim has been the only way I have seen anything different. Not even RC will tell you to turn on a certain taxiway.

To be honest with you, most of the time I was flying real life, they will either tell you "Turn next taxiway" or "Turn off when able" I have only a few times ever been told to turn on a certain taxiway, and that was usually because they had a conflict that they did not want me adding to.
Sorry, I wrote it the wrong way, what I meant was if there was any way that ATC will tell me to turn off the runway for example "Giant 515 heavy, turn left at next insersection". I saw a video from FS9 on YouTube where the ATC controller told the user aircraft to do a left turn off the runway. Is that kind of phraseology a part of RC perhaps?

Patrik: I have no idea on that. You might want to go back and listen to that playback again and see if its the typical FS voice that you are hearing? Sounds really suspicious to me, I am guessing he may have been using Vatsim? I have almost always heard "Exit runway when able" or "Turn off at the next high speed (radar contact)" The neat thing about Radar Contact is you are able to receive a critique at the end. If you screwed up, there is a guy that will come on and introduce himself as an FAA FISDO agent. Kind of corny, but I get a kick out of it. Perhaps you can post that U-tube link on here so we can listen?

Patrik Lundberg 1835 · Mon May 05, 2008 4:15 pm

Hi

I can´t find the video on YouTube, it was a while since I saw it, but I have another question for ya, is was checking som videos from FS9 and FSX with RC4 and the chatter sounds really realistic but when the user and AI aircaft speaks it sounds very strange. The speech is really slow, is there any way to speed the speech up a bit.

By the way, thanks for all your help!

Kind regards

mlegein · Post by **mlegein** » Mon May 05, 2008 8:32 pm

Hello Patrick

If you use Active Sky, I believe you can tune to 118.00 and 118.02 (or is it 122.00 and 122.02) at any time during the flight to get local ATIS and destination ATIS.

If you use Radar Contact, you can specify your departure and arrival gates and if I remember correctly it will give you a routing to or from the gate (like follow taxiways alpha, juliet 5 and x-ray).

Radar Contact 4 has had a few updates since. I believe the currect version is 4.3. Should make the speech more fluent and less mechanical.

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Mon May 05, 2008 9:23 pm

Patrik: I have the last upgrade on RC and there are just a few voices you have to live with on there. It's not bad all in all, and for what you are getting, its just one of those things where you have to settle a little. You also have the choice of picking what voices you want in the set up. There is one guy on there that sounds just like a machine, I have him totally set to where he won't be heard on my RC.

Unfortunately there is no competition out there, RC is it unless you run Vatsim. FS9 ATC?.....Well, you know what we all think of that.

yoni63 · Post by **yoni63** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:02 pm

Patrik, to be totally honest, if you are looking for as real as it gets, then you would be very impressed with Vatsim. Their only draw back is times when not very many controllers are online. When they are online, its as real as you can ask for. Tomas is a controller on Vatsim and can give you any info you might need. I don't know how familiar you are with it.

cyoo eddie · Post by **cyoo eddie** » Mon May 05, 2008 10:11 pm

forget fs9 atc, it will drive you nuts.....

vatsim....

once you get hooked on it, nothing else comes close....

Vic Bautista · Post by **Vic Bautista** » Mon May 05, 2008 11:42 pm

Errr... what is ATC? Hehee

eek · Post by **eek** » Tue May 06, 2008 1:52 am

@Patrik:
With Active Sky, you can fetch the weather for any airport during your flight, on the main screen. It gives you the current or archived METAR and also deciphers it to English. It will also give you the forecast (You'll need to learn how to read METAR, if you want to decipher the forecast), so you can see expected wind shifts. This is how I plan for which runway to use. I also have the forecast reliability set to 80%, so it's wrong about 20% of the time... just like real life. Makes for some interesting flying when the forecast is wrong, and you have to redo everything on the fly at the last minute.

Radar Contact reduces the go-arounds and conflicts with AI. I believe it tries to alter the speed of the AI planes. Go-arounds only happen occasionally, and I have tons of AI running at 100%. When it does happen, it's usually the AI that has to GA. I rarely have to GA for traffic on the runway. There's also a freeware program called AI Smooth, that will send AI to a hold, if it's going to conflict with your approach. No ATC with that one, though. It just gets the AI planes out of your way.

Radar Contact is the only game in town for a realistic ATC experience. The robotic voices turned me off at first, too. But there was an update or a fix, that sped the voices up so they sound more natural. It's a lot better than it was. After you use it a while, you won't even notice it, especially once you get used to flying real world procedures. Very cool when it tells you to hold 40 miles from ATL on the 330 radial, or you can fly an entire procedure like the Paradise Four at LAX right down to the runway.

RC will usually tell you to turn off at the next high speed. If you miss it, it will tell you to turn when able, I think.

So, basically, you can solve all your problems with Radar Contact and Active Sky. Both programs are well worth the money.

@Bryan:
RC will slow you down to 230 on downwind, and 210 on base. You shouldn't be flying that fast anyway.

Captain Leadfoot a.k.a. Flyin' Bryan.

Brogs · Post by **Brogs** » Tue May 06, 2008 8:05 am

The only prob I,ve found with Active Sky is when your crossing the Pond it can change the Weather on you in a big way, it can happen that your cruising @ FL330 say and you leave for awhile, you come back and the bird is at FL150 with 10dgs of Flap and pitched up to 10dgs with the speed at 160 give or take, and its only in that config because of the Virt Co-Pilot otherwise she would be in the drink, so I don,t use AS anymore on Long Haul unless I,m going to see the whole flight through !

cyoo eddie · Post by **cyoo eddie** » Tue May 06, 2008 8:36 am

Mike,
Ive had that problem also, with the speed and the flaps thing, before I used active sky,

I would have been using the weather downloaded through sqauk box at the time, however. I think it is something to do with fs9 and sudden drastic changes in the wind.

Of course, this will never happen when you are sitting watching the screen, only happens when you leave for a few minutes, to get an in flight meal, cup of coffee, or let the dog out