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Can't enter "-" in callsign field.


William Su
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William Su
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I can't put a "-" in my callsign for example: C-GATL. Used to be able to do it in FsInn and squwkbox. Anyone know why?

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Ross Carlson
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Because that's not a valid character for callsigns. (Real world included.) If FSInn and Squawkbox allowed hyphens, they probably stripped them out before sending to the network.

Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy

Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC

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William Su
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1 hour ago, Ross Carlson said:

Because that's not a valid character for callsigns. (Real world included.) If FSInn and Squawkbox allowed hyphens, they probably stripped them out before sending to the network.

Flightaware.JPG.f0173f5cbbbfa7ab6bc945d1b1605e7d.JPGVATStats.JPG.e6701061e524ceb6edec3fc6c6972c27.JPGI think this speaks for itself.

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Matthew Bartels
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Those are likely being added back in by the website for clarity. As far as ATC goes, the hyphen is not recognized or input into the system in the real world. The controller would see CGLKT.  Therefore the more modern clients on VATSIM do not allow for the hyphen.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Forever and always "Just the events guy"

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Ross Carlson
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I think this speaks for itself, too:

image.thumb.png.6e8bf7e885942152da33a16664e40ab8.png

(From the ICAO flight plan rules.)

Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy

Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC

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Tobias Dammers
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Think of the hyphen as working pretty much like in phone numbers - it is sometimes inserted when formatting, to aid readability, but it is not part of the phone number / callsign itself, and the actual systems processing the information will strip it out / ignore it. In a phone number, only digits, hash and star are recognized, and the plus sign carries a special meaning ("use whatever the prefix for international calls is in the country you're calling from"); everything else is removed.

And just like in a phone number, where the hyphen can be re-inserted unambiguously based on the digits themselves, the same can be done with callsigns, because they all follow the same format.

23.png
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