New Navigation Equipment Information and Cluttered Data Blocks

[Andrew Doubleday]

So the new navigational equipment information is causing issues with the first line of data blocks becoming incredibly cluttered with all of the data (there was apparently no limit to characters placed in this field, an oversight I assume). Is there any way we can get someone to fix this to convert to FAA equipment codes? It's an added task to have to clear all of that up in the flight plan editor using ERAM. I'm certain I can't be the only one experiencing this issue as of late.

Regards,

AJ

[Evan Reiter]

A little over a month ago, VATSIM released a new ICAO pre-file system but unfortunately did not consider the impact the new ICAO codes would have on existing clients. There's a lengthy thread on that here:

In summary, there was discussion that, at least for U.S.-based flight plans, the system should automatically convert the ICAO to FAA suffixes so that this doesn't happen. On August 22, VP, Tech Development said:

Quote

I've spoken to a couple of people in the loop already but want to clarify for everyone else's benefit as transparency is critical at this point. 

There was some disconnect in information in how clients would support this and I apologise to those, especially in the US, as to how this has impacted you.

Modernising the network is a big thing for everyone, we all want flashy new things and to get there takes baby steps. This was meant to be one of them but hasn't gone quite as well as we might have hoped 😞

Obviously we need to find a solution, even just a temporary one and I will be working with the web team to get this done ASAP until a longer term solution can be found. It's likely that this will be released tomorrow and will for any K***/PH**/PA** airport in the flightplan, will convert from the ICAO to ERAM format utilised by the US and I will post here once that's been complete.

https://forums.vatsim.net/topic/28734-new-prefile-pagewebsite/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-166988

However, I don't believe anything has actually changed yet. Given this affects many VATSIM clients, including VatSPY, all of Ross' ATC clients, and even EuroScope, I'd hope a fix is still forthcoming.

Edited September 28, 2020 at 04:34 PM by Evan Reiter

[Andrew Doubleday]

Thanks, I'll refer to that thread for future updates.

[Andrew Ogden]

Isn't the FAA converting soon to the ICAO format?

[Dhruv Kalra]

14 hours ago, Andrew Ogden said:

Isn't the FAA converting soon to the ICAO format?

ICAO flight plans are required in the US for all IFR aircraft, but ATC automation still uses the old single-character suffixes.

ICAO flight plan messages are passed through a filtering system in ERAM that converts the data based on ICAO EQP and SURV data and generates a single-character FAA NAS equipment suffix that is displayed on data blocks, flight strips, and in the EDST system (electronic strips). The full ICAO flight plan is available to us as well, but it requires diving 2-3 levels deep into the EDST.

Last I’d looked, the prefile system conversion mentioned by @Matt Bozwood-Davies should be working. I’ve seen converted prefiled flight plans in the wild, although the “DCT” portions of the route string don’t get filtered, and I believe the heavy weight class doesn’t get translated to the H/ Prefix in the aircraft type field.

Edited September 29, 2020 at 08:54 PM by Dhruv Kalra

[Evan Reiter]

58 minutes ago, Dhruv Kalra said:

Last I’d looked, the prefile system conversion mentioned by @Matt Bozwood-Davies should be working. I’ve seen converted prefiled flight plans in the wild, although the “DCT” portions of the route string don’t get filtered, and I believe the heavy weight class doesn’t get translated to the H/ Prefix in the aircraft type field.

It doesn't appear to be. I just connected to VatSPY and saw this: 

[Dhruv Kalra]

On 9/29/2020 at 4:51 PM, Evan Reiter said:

It doesn't appear to be. I just connected to VatSPY and saw this:

VATGOV5 may be able to elaborate, but from what I can tell it's working for flights that originate and terminate within the US.