OnCourse Software

I wonder why my ATC does not use airline callsigns for AI traffic. Queued up waiting for take-off behind a long line of aircraft, Tower addresses all aircraft using the NATO phonetic alphabet, often starting 'AIBU..' Alpha India Bravo Uniform...' The proper callsigns, Speedbird, Air France and so on are of course available as wav files, so I wonder why they aren't being used for AI traffic. Is it impossible, or do I have my PF3 set up incorrectly?

Thanks.

Is this the case for all of your AI? Some AI on my setup will occasionally get phonetic calls but the major calls such as Speedbird, Air France, Lufthansa, etc. are all there. I once again am wondering about your AI add-on's traffic files and how they are set up. I see no reason why PF3 would not use those major call signs.

That was quick Dan!

This morning, all the aircraft in the runway queue were addressed in that way - most were BA, but there was no 'Speedbird' callsign used. An Air France a320 was also not addressed with 'Air France', so I guess it is all AI traffic. Looks like I may have a problem with my setup. From where exactly does PF3 read the callsigns for AI traffic? User a/c always get the right callsign, when you set the airline in Options #1

Look in the airplane config file and make sure each aircraft has the proper callsign listed.

PF3 reads the AI callsigns from FSUIPC and logs them to Logs/Atc_Chat.log. It then uses Data/Callsigns_Map.dat to map them to wav files.
This does not always work for me either, but I still have to find a pattern. I'm using UT2 for traffic.

Edit: Just looked for an example:

Atc_Chat.log:
06/06/2016 21:27:16 - 135.45: ID 396 - Initial contact from Lufthansa HBHRD on 125.8
debug_monitor.log:
06/06/2016 21:27:05: 440 - Transcript: 'Hotel Bravo Hotel Romeo Delta Roger Continue present heading '

But in the same logs:
06/06/2016 21:43:19 - 135.45: ID 461 - Initial contact from Aeroflot 2460 on 118.75
06/06/2016 21:43:09: 610 - Transcript: 'HANNOVER RADAR Aeroflot 2460 Level at Flight Level 350 '

Hmm, I have to verify this, but a quick guess is that the problem only occurs with callsigns starting with letters.

Quote:

the problem only occurs with callsigns starting with letters

Not quite sure what you mean by that - all call signs start with letters ('Speedbird' starts with 'S').. Presumably you mean when the flight number is in letters (?).

It could be that a lot of my aircraft.cfg files (the AI ones, I mean) do not have the correct atc_airline or possibly any entry at all for atc_flight_number. If PF3 ultimately gets the data from the aircraft.cfg file, that could be a reason for the problem. It would be a HUGE job to correct all these, so I wouldn't attempt it unless it is sure that PF3 is getting its data from the AI aircraft.cfg files (via FSUIPC). Begs the question, where does FSUIPC get its call sign data from?

On the other hand, for user aircraft, call signs must be pre-programmed into PF3 and are selected automatically when you choose the airline in Options #1. Whatever is in the aircraft.cfg file is ignored, as far as I can tell.

I attach my log, which of course I am unable to read.

Thanks.

One example - ATC gives instructions to 'Alpha India Bravo Uniform Uniform Bravo, but I have checked, and there is no such sequence of letters in any aircraft.cfg, so the information cannot be coming from the FS9/Aircraft folder

Code: Select all 06/07/2016 11:21:14 - Taxi to terminal Grd: Airbus UYI as AIBUYI with COM: 121.7 --> True - False - 0 - False - - 145 - 263 - 0 06/07/2016 11:27:08 - Taxi to terminal Grd: Airbus UPS as AIBUPS with COM: 121.7 --> True - False - 0 - False - - 145 - 177 - 0

This is in the FAQ:

Quote:

Q: Why do I hear ATC calling the aircraft make rather than the actual airline call sign?
A: Please check under the Technical Tab in FSUIPC (or look under the GENERAL section the FSUIPC.INI file) and set the TCASid entry to FLIGHT. Programs such as AIBlast and FSHotSeat appear to change these settings which make them incompatible with PF3

Though "aircraft make" isn't really correct here as "Airbus" is translated to "AI", because PF3 does not have "Airbus".
But it was true for other aircraft, e.g.:

Code: Select all 06/07/2016 12:54:10 - Initial contact with Tower for Landing 6 miles, 2473' runway 16 Air: Citation CDB as Citation CDB with COM: 118.6 --> True - False - 0 - False - - 142 - 681 - 8

P.S.: Please use .zip instead of .rar, as your .rar files are generated by a new version of RAR which requires a proprietary implementation of unrar to extract.

I'll check this out, thanks!

Quote:

Please use .zip instead of .rar, as your .rar files are generated by a new version of RAR which requires a proprietary implementation of unrar to extract.

I automatically get rar files when I create an archive -I've always remembered in the past to manually select zip files, but forgot this time!

I doubt I would ever have noticed that in the FAQ, I should read them through again, there may be other stuff there I have forgotten all about.

I made the changes in the FSUIPC.ini file and all the AI call signs seem to be back. I must have been flying without them for several months! I can certainly hear the difference now - not sure why it took so long for me to twig that something was amiss!!

Many thanks.