Stanley777 Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 Hi everyone, I have had this question in mind for a long time. The other day, using FSX: Steam Edition, I was approaching an airport and pushed the number to request a touch-and-go landing. So the following message got generated automatically: "Such-and-such tower, with my aircraft tail number is 5 miles southeast with X-ray, for touch and go." I sometimes see different letters from X-ray. Here is my question: What does the X-ray mean? Thank you. Stanley Intel Core i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 | Dell U2717D monitor | Thrustmaster T.Flight Stick X Total available graphics memory: 24534 MB; Dedicated video memory: 8192 MB; System video memory: 0 MB; Shared system memory: 16342 MB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longbreak754 Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 It is referring to the latest weather broadcast for the airport in question. If the airport has an ATIS frequency the b/casted message will included such details as the runway in use, wind direction/speed, cloud cover etc. It will usually end with a message about your initial call to approach, asking you to state your location, heading etc and that you are in receipt of (letter) wx forecast Regards Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lnuss Posted June 20, 2017 Share Posted June 20, 2017 To elaborate on Brian's reply, airports with weather observers generate a new report every hour, or more frequently for some situations. The ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service) broadcast (usually at a towered field) includes that hourly report, along with runway closures, construction, or other pertinent information. Each ATIS broadcast is coded with a letter of the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Mike, Zulu, etc.) and changes every hour or when there are important changes in information that must be passed along. So X-Ray is the current ATIS, and Yankee will be next. If you've listened to ATIS and tell ATC you have X-Ray, but it just changed, he might say "Information Yankee is current," expecting you to get Yankee to be up to date. ATIS is a big time saver for ATC, since they are required to provide "the information" to incoming aircraft, such as winds, altimeter setting, etc., and before ATIS existed this was a time-consuming thing. Now ATIS saves a lot (not quite all) of that time and radio clutter. Larry N. As Skylab would say: Remember: Aviation is NOT an exact Science! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stanley777 Posted June 21, 2017 Author Share Posted June 21, 2017 Thank you Brian and Larry for these instructive answers to my question. Stanley Intel Core i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 | Dell U2717D monitor | Thrustmaster T.Flight Stick X Total available graphics memory: 24534 MB; Dedicated video memory: 8192 MB; System video memory: 0 MB; Shared system memory: 16342 MB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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