I have some questions that I’m hoping y’all can help me with.
I am told that we make CTAF calls on the real world CTAF freq, but when I do I get no response. If I make them on 122.8 I get people telling me I’m on the wrong frequency. The documentation seems to support me with CTAF, but it doesn’t seem to happen this way in practice. Anyone know the actual answer?
Next, why can I not get an ATIS or ASOS to work unless a center controller is on? Any thoughts there?
Also, for you VATSIM flyers, would anyone be interested in doing a back country fly-in?
It’s been a long time since I was on Vatsim, but from memory, other than the plugin needed, it behaved pretty much like real life ATC. And in that case, CTAF is usually either at airports without a control tower, or when the tower was closed. There might have have been an operating tower, and no one was on the CTAF. Was 122.8 on the airport diagram?
If not, maybe it is being used by an adjacent airport. IRL, there are many adjacent airports that share controlling agencies, but on different frequencies. For instance, when you fly out of Pearson in Vancouver, WA, you often chat with PDX, which is more or less on the other side of the Columbia river.
I did some deeper digging on the VATSIM website. According to these two pages, we use 122.8 while flying, and then use the CTAF like we would in the real world to communicate pattern entry or position, taxi, etc etc. It’s just not being utilized well by pilots right now. In short, I was doing it right and we use real world procedures.
The VATSIM people use the ATIS to signal they are online, in that part of them setting up is to manually put the ATIS info for the areas they are covering. So a top-down Center controller will stand up ATIS for the airports they are expecting calls from. It’s sort of just by convention.
