Beginner needs help

[Ron Henderson]

When I first sign on I see aircraft in my airspace. Most of them have what looks like a capital letter I with some date which appears to be altitude and speed. How do I see the rest of the data tag. What is the sequence of steps to see flight plan, [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign code, and start tracking?

[Ross Carlson]

Hi Ron, best place to start is the docomeentation. vERAM is a simulation of a very complex piece of real-world software and you won't be able to just fire it up and use it without reading the docomeentation front to back.

 

http://veram.metacraft.com/Docomeentation.aspx

[Ron Henderson]

The steps I follow in the docomeentation don't seem to work for me. I press F6 then select the aircraft and no flight plan shows. I issue a code using F9 then P and select ahead of the aircraft, just like the docomeentation says, but it doesn't pick up the track.

[Ron Henderson]

I press F3 then click on the scope ahead of where the aircraft is tracking but when the aircraft reaches that point I just get something that says its CST and the plane never picks up the track

[Ryan Geckler]

Have you [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned a beacon code? Is the aircraft already squawking a discrete code? Otherwise, the track will not know what to try to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ociate itself with.

 

F6 will only work if you have tracked the target already. Otherwise, you need to do F6 [enter].

[Ron Henderson]

How do I know the callsign if it looks like a capital I, unless I look at vatspy, vattastic, etc

[Ron Henderson]

I need to get the data block to show me something other than I. I can't tell if is sq a discrete code or not.

[Ryan Geckler]

Now you understand why we ask for a position on check-in

 

Let's say UAL123 calls up. You do F6 UAL123 and see that he doesn't have a beacon code [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned. Now, you'll do F9/QB UAL123 and it'll bring up a code for you. That code is now being searched for by the system. When the aircraft squawks whatever code you gave it, it'll autotrack up since now there's a code [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ociated with the flight. That's how you can radar ID aircraft.

 

If the aircraft has a code, you can have the aircraft ident, see the ident, then do F3/QT and it'll track up.

[Ron Henderson]

I get FLID error when I do that

[Ron Henderson]

oh wait when I do contact me I see their callsign

[Ron Henderson]

Worked that time

[Andrew Morkunas]

There is a VATSIMism build into vERAM that I used to my advantage. Using the AutoHotKey macro language and a macro keyboard I am able to open flight plans, [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign squawk codes, and accept departures of any uncorrelated aircraft using two keystrokes. Identify the uncorrelated aircraft by selecting the aircraft with the Home key that begins a CONTACT ME request. Do not press enter. Delete CONTACT ME and replace it with SR, QB or DM. Using AutoHotKey I [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned these macros to CTRL-ALT-x, CTRL-ALT-q, and CTRL-ALT-d. The macro code follows.

 

; vERAM open uncorrelated flight plan
^!x::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen

send {right}
sleep 150
send {del 10}
sleep 150
send {ins}
sleep 150
send SR
send {enter}

return

; [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign squawk code
^!q::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen

send {right}
sleep 150
send {del 10}
sleep 150
send {ins}
sleep 150
send QB
send {enter}

return

; accept departure
^!d::
CoordMode, Mouse, Screen

send {right}
sleep 150
send {del 10}
sleep 150
send {ins}
sleep 150
send DM
send {enter}

return

[Reuben Prevost 1279585]

This is probably a teaching moment. Ron, in the real-world, if someone makes an initial call to you as ATC from uncontrolled, you don't know where they are. You aren't supposed to. In the real world, your callsign and flightplan are not automatically correlated to your target. In VRC, it's hard to understand this because you can see everyone's callsign even if they are uncorrelated and this is not how it should be.

 

This is why radar identification is so important. This is why aircraft need to include a position report in their initial call. This way we know where they are.

 

In my opinion, this is a hard VATSIMism to overcome because we don't teach radar well. This is why we need to focus more on radar and identification in our training programs. It might be best to teach that topic by using vERAM, that way the new guys really understand it.