If I'm approaching a airport with no center or approach control or tower control do I contact ground or stay on unicom until i land?

[Graeme Irick Burtis]

Title says it itself

Edited July 19, 2021 at 04:53 PM by GTNT Animations

[Lars Bergmann]

You can tune into ground before you land, but you only need to talk to them once vacated.

[Alistair Thomson]

Expanding on Lars' comment, you would therefore stay with UNICOM until vacating the runway. The runway is owned by Tower and Ground is below that in the ATC hierarchy, so they will not wish to handle you until you are vacated. You can, as Lars said, tune Ground on the standby and switch from UNICOM on the active frequency when ready.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

Generally speaking, if a lower controller is on but a higher controller is not, you contact that lower controller at around the same time you would have been handed off to them by the higher controller had they been on.

[Graeme Irick Burtis]

Thanks for all the help! I know vatsim has the bottom up ATC system where if clearance isn't online you would contact ground but I didn't know if it had a similar thing for landings 

[Alistair Thomson]

4 hours ago, GTNT Animations said:

I know vatsim has the bottom up ATC system

Nope. It's a top-down system. So for example if an airfield has ATC cover for Tower, that would also cover Ground and Delivery, but not Approach/Departure or Control/Center.

[John McMurdo]

I wish I had found this thread earlier.