Emergency Squawk Codes

[kurt1288]

I'd be surprised, but does changing your transponder to any of the emergency squawk codes do anything?

[slarente]

Nope! Sorry... It would be nice though...

[Bozkashi]

Still using FS9 at the moment but please tell me that ATC doesn't send you on massive round-about routes in FSX so I don't NEED to worry about fuel emergencies

Boz

[jetguy35]

Sometimes they send you on roundabout routes for landing. Especially if they make you go around. Your looking at about another 35 minutes before landing.

Ben

[Rocky123]

>Sometimes they send you on roundabout routes for landing.
>Especially if they make you go around. Your looking at about
>another 35 minutes before landing.
>
>Ben

Ben,

If you could so kindly explain further your thoughts when you said: "send you on roundabout routes...another 35 minutes for landing" ?

IFR landings and VFR landings are two different things and it would be worthy of dissertation to understand which one you are broad-brushing with the above highlighted statment.

I have found all of the IFR - ATC routings to be fairly sensible thus far in FSX, and feel that it is a vast improvement over the crudeness of FS9.

Eagerly awaiting your qualified and expert explanation of your general comments to the prior poster.

[jetguy35]

Sorry to be so short in my earlier post. Most of the time when I am flying using the ATC, the controllers are pretty good about sending me in on a pretty good route. Then other times when you are coming into a busy airport (KJFK, KORD, etc..), the ATC will try to push as many aircraft in line for landing on a certain runway. There is not much to do about it either. For example, They will say to turn to a heading of 240 and continue until established on the localizer. So they are vectoring me right into a mess of other aircraft routed for the same runway as me. Then, I will be on final cleared for #3 to land and I will have aircraft less than a couple miles in front and in back of me. Then sometimes I will be on a one mile final and see an aircraft just touching down on my runway. I am automatically thinking to go around. Sure enough, I have to go around. This is usually where it gets messed up the most though. After the go around, they tell me to turn to a certain heading and climb to a specified altiitude to come back around. The problem with this is that after they tell me to make a couple of turns, it's almost as if they get confused on what I am doing there. They vector me about 30 miles out from the airport and I start thinking, "have they forgot about me?" Sometimes they finally decide to bring me back toward the airport, or sometimes they let me continue until I get a message saying, "your flight plan has been cancelled." I love it when they cancel my flight plan for no specific reason (sarcasm). But anyways, I don't mind it that much. I like the fact that I will have to go around sometimes. It adds a sense of realism. Heck, my brother is a pilot for a regional airline and he tells me about his flights all of the time. He talks about goarounds that happen to him. I like the fact that I get some of the same results as he gets. So in ending, I am not burning the FSX ATC. I think it is pretty good for the most part. There are just some times when those controllers get a little stupid. But it happens to the best of us in real life, so I wont point any fingers.

Hope I answered your questions,

Ben

[Bozkashi]

Ben

Thanks for your earlier reply - I asked a straightforward question and I got a straightforward courteous reply. That's what these forums are for, after all.

Leonardo

I too like the ATC - it is far better than the days where we flew in empty skies. I just wondered how far it had improved as I'm not yet an FSX user (roll on Christmas...)

I don't think Ben was setting himself up as some form of expert on FSX ATC - he was just answering a question put by another bloke who likes to sit at a computer pretending to fly a plane.

I can see you believe passionately in this product, in which case I am truly heartened as I'm looking forward to getting it but a lot of negative comment on this forum has taken the edge off a bit. It is nice to hear someone defend it and sing its praises, even if it does seem a little spikey.

In summary thanks to you both - I am once again looking forward to FSX.

Boz

[gmbfly98]

<<
Sometimes they finally decide to bring me back toward the airport, or sometimes they let me continue until I get a message saying, "your flight plan has been cancelled." I love it when they cancel my flight plan for no specific reason (sarcasm).
>>

This is probably the same bug I get where it sometimes won't let you reply to ATC. I'm guessing the reason why it seems you're getting cancelled for "no reason" is because I've also found that in some really busy airports, ATC starts rattling off so many commands for many different aircraft that you literally can't reply to them for quite a while.

On a flight from JFK to ORD, after I was being vectored around from a go-around, ATC asked me to turn to a certain heading and I was stuck with the blank ATC window without any replies. Usually I hear them say "<callsign>, did you copy?" 3 or 4 times before cancelling. But because there were so many aircraft being vectored on that frequency, I only heard it once before my flight plan was cancelled.

The only real gripe I have with FSX's ATC is the "can't reply to ATC" bug. It's especially annoying when you have to reopen your flight plan while in the middle of being vectored for final approach. I hope this gets fixed soon.