Alias: .msg... character limit?

[1341101]

Hiya,

Am getting an interesting issue. I am trying to use .msg to send PDCs (FAA) and am using the following format:

Quote

.pdc .msg $aircraft - CLEARANCE START - $dep $arr PDC | CALLSIGN: $aircraft | BEACON: $squawk | ALTITUDE: $cruise | EQUIPMENT: $type($aircraft) | $dep $route $arr | ALTITUDE RESTRICTIONS: CLIMB VIA SID. EXP $cruise 10 MIN AFT DP | *ADDITIONAL INFORMATION* DEPARTURE FREQUENCY: $freq | THIS MESSAGE SERVES AS YOUR DEPARTURE CLEARANCE. YOU DO NOT NEED TO REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. CONTACT $radioname ON $freq WITH LOCATION ON THE AIRPORT AND CURRENT ATIS WHEN READY TO PUSH OR IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS CLEARANCE. - CLEARANCE END -
 

An issue I am getting here is the fact that for some reason, clicking "enter" to send the message won't work until I shrink the message and only send around 260 characters, hence I highlighted the first 260 characters in my message in bold. I don't think there's anything wrong specifically with the message because I also tried to shrink the message from the start, and it would only start sending when it reached approximately 260 characters. I also tried to play around with different text combinations, starting from ".msg", and still got the same result. So my question is, is there a character limit on ".msg" and is there any way to resolve this, or am I thinking in the wrong direction?
Thanks.

[Lars Bergmann]

The limit is 255. There is no way to bypass it afaik. The way I solved it for US PDCs is to remove the .msg $aircraft part and to open a chat window with that aircraft before sending the PDC (F1+C -> Click -> .pdc). That is the best I could figure out.

[Jonas Kuster]

The limit is indeed 255 characters. But I think it is actually limited by FSD. Because then I'm online as a supervisor, I can send longer messages.

[Lars Bergmann]

No, that is not an FSD limitation. You can absolutely send longer messages by opening the chat first and then sending the message rather than using ".msg CALLSIGN message".

Edited February 7, 2022 at 09:34 PM by Lars Bergmann

[Tony Koch]

We do it in two messages. Takes no time at all.

.pdc1 .msg $aircraft - PDC PART 1 - | $aircraft | Cleared to $arr via $SID departure | Approved route: $route | Depart $RWY | Squawk code $squawk | Identifier $3

.pdc2 .msg $aircraft PDC PART 2 - This message is your departure clearance. No need to reply. 10 minutes before departure, contact ATC with location, current ATIS (if available) and identifier. Contact ATC by voice or text with questions. - CLEARANCE END

[Jonas Kuster]

23 hours ago, Lars Bergmann said:

No, that is not an FSD limitation. You can absolutely send longer messages by opening the chat first and then sending the message rather than using ".msg CALLSIGN message".

Sure, but as a supervisor you can also send alias messages longer than 255 characters. This seems to be an FSD limitation (most probably related to the rating you use for login).

[Matt Bozwood-Davies]

FSD doesn't limit a packet by facility or rating or anything. We have a maximum length that the packet can be as a whole and that is it.

[Lars Bergmann]

On 2/8/2022 at 10:36 PM, Jonas Kuster said:

Sure, but as a supervisor you can also send alias messages longer than 255 characters. This seems to be an FSD limitation (most probably related to the rating you use for login).

And you are both using aliases using a ".msg $aircraft message" syntax and are runnning EuroScope? (Thought you SUPs used VRC for supervising).

Edited February 13, 2022 at 05:15 PM by Lars Bergmann

[Gergely Csernak]

That is a limit in the ES code. I just wanted to avoid sending long-long messages to server side. As easy fix I modified it up to 1024.