Last aircraft calling?

[Roger Curtiss]

If all controllers are utilizing AFV for communication how difficult is it to keep a minimized AFV window open in the corner of your screen to see the callsign of the last radio transmission received and thus greatly eliminate the need to ask?  I know that doing so has been of great help to me as a controller.

 

[Ross Carlson]

Maybe controllers don't want to do that for realism reasons. Not all real world radar systems have the ability to identify the calling aircraft.

[Torben Andersen]

Sometime pilots step on each other or transmits back to back - if more than a couple does this, the problem can arise. Also some 3 letter airline code is sometimes not recognized by the controller, so the callsign needs to be repeated. 

[Robert Shearman Jr]

I prefer not to rely on that crutch based on the idea that a real controller doesn't have that ability.  But, not gonna lie -- I occasionally ask "last aircraft calling" even when I CAN see the AFV window, just to help alert the calling pilot know they could stand to try speaking more clearly.

Edited February 21, 2022 at 08:36 AM by Robert Shearman Jr

[Andreas Fuchs]

I hardly use that function of AFV, but on my radar screen I can see what station(s) are transmitting at a time. But I still have to ask for the last station to say again, because I was distracted with doing something else so I could not check who was calling. Happens in the real world as well, regularly.

[Alex Ying]

7 hours ago, Robert Shearman Jr said:

I prefer not to rely on that crutch based on the idea that a real controller doesn't have that ability.  But, not gonna lie -- I occasionally ask "last aircraft calling" even when I CAN see the AFV window, just to help alert the calling pilot know they could stand to try speaking more clearly.

Like Rob, I prefer not to rely on a "cheat" since the real systems don't do that. I also sometimes do it to encourage pilots to remember the "who are you, where are you, what do you want" method of checking in, because a lot of them dump all the non-relevant information on you and somehow leave out the most important bits.

It's also for my own personal betterment to make sure I'm listening carefully to check-ins.

[Roger Curtiss]

Thanks for the replies.  I understand the controllers who do not want to "cheat", however, if VATSIM offers a feature that is potentially more helpful than one RW controllers have I see little reason not to take advantage of that.  Personal preference I suppose.

[Bernardo Reis]

On 2/21/2022 at 10:21 PM, Roger Curtiss said:

Thanks for the replies.  I understand the controllers who do not want to "cheat", however, if VATSIM offers a feature that is potentially more helpful than one RW controllers have I see little reason not to take advantage of that.  Personal preference I suppose.

Several controller clients also offer "easy VATSIM" correlation modes and I assume the majority of the controllers stay away from them for realism reasons.

The ability to artificially limit the tools I have at my disposal to match the real ones is something that helps me achieve a greater level of simulation, thus more fun.

Every person is gonna have a different take on this, however, in the recent years people started shifting towards this approach. Maybe it's related to the amount of people that started to porsue their aviation career after joining VATSIM and now, as aviation professionals, like to simulate it better and spread this way of doing it as a payback to what VATSIM offered them.

 

One thing I've also noticed is: some people say that controllers take realism in their scopes or tools to seriously but if you offer those a default plane to fly, most won't accept because it's not realistic 😄

[Tobias Dammers]

Indeed, it is a simulation, and as such, you kind of want to get as close to the real thing as you reasonably can.

Technically, the VATSIM network could give every controller a perfect view of the position of every simulated aircraft in the world, down to the millimeter, and it could tell them exactly who is speaking when and on which frequency. But we're simulating real air traffic control here, including the technical limitations of real-world air surveillance and communication systems, and not being able to magically see who is talking is one such limitation.

And yes, it's the same on the pilot side. If I wanted to, I could make my non-RNAV PA28 follow a GPS route, with perfect accuracy, and I could see all traffic in a 90-mile radius on a radar scope, with callsigns and all - but that's not how you would operate the aircraft IRL, so I don't do that, I fly it like I would fly the real thing, with oldschool VOR navigation, and relying on ATC or CTAF comms and the good old Mk-I Eyeball for separation. Because it's more realistic, more immersive, and more fun.

Likewise, when I fly an airliner, I could just cheat - use autostart to set up the cockpit, autoland in perfect visibility conditions, fake weather so I won't have to deal with those pesky clouds, "infinite fuel" so I won't have to do any fuel calculations, etc.; but that defeats the point of "simulation" to some degree.

The limitations are artificial; sure, but that's because it's a simulation, *everything* is artificial in the end.

[Bernardo Reis]

Speaking of things that VATSIM could show to help controllers.... I'm thinking indicated airspeed, mach number... Who knows, maybe selected flight level? 😁

[Andreas Fuchs]

I am happy with the Radio Direction Finder. It's 100% realistic using this plugin. That's almost as good as using the "last voice transmission" that AFV offers.

[Dustin Rider]

4 hours ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

I am happy with the Radio Direction Finder. It's 100% realistic using this plugin. That's almost as good as using the "last voice transmission" that AFV offers.

I'm guessing this is a Euroscope plugin? How does that work? I'm a vERAM user, so I don't really know anything about ES.

[Andreas Fuchs]

14 hours ago, Dustin Rider said:

I'm guessing this is a Euroscope plugin? How does that work? I'm a vERAM user, so I don't really know anything about ES.

It's basically this plugin, integrated into TopSky: https://github.com/chembergj/RDF

There's a video from Eurocontrol (the real one) demonstrating the functions.

 

When a pilot transmits while on your current radar display, a circle will be drawn around its target:

 

And if a pilot transmit voice while being outside your display area, a line will point towards it:

That's how the real system works, too.

Edited March 3, 2022 at 11:10 AM by Andreas Fuchs

[Ryan Geckler]

FWIW, US ATC have no way of determining who is transmitting.

[Dustin Rider]

12 hours ago, Ryan Geckler said:

FWIW, US ATC have no way of determining who is transmitting.

Not unless you happen to be looking at the VSCS and see if the aircraft only lights up one receiver instead of three--and even then it's a crapshoot as to which plane it was. US FSS used to have radio direction finding capability, but I don't know if that survived the privatization, consolidation, and eventual takeover of Leidos.

Fascinating, Andreas. That's quite a system the Eurocontrol folks have at their disposal.

[Andreas Fuchs]

6 hours ago, Dustin Rider said:

That's quite a system the Eurocontrol folks have at their disposal.

In the real world this has been in use for the last 15 years, or so. And not only with Eurocontrol. I think French ATC had it very early and could tell who was meowing and barking on guard frequency 😄

Edited March 3, 2022 at 10:49 PM by Andreas Fuchs
Correction

[Ryan Geckler]

1 hour ago, Dustin Rider said:

Not unless you happen to be looking at the VSCS and see if the aircraft only lights up one receiver instead of three--and even then it's a crapshoot as to which plane it was. US FSS used to have radio direction finding capability, but I don't know if that survived the privatization, consolidation, and eventual takeover of Leidos.

Fascinating, Andreas. That's quite a system the Eurocontrol folks have at their disposal.

If you are using cross coupling, it shows both lit up.

[Dhruv Kalra]

On 3/3/2022 at 11:17 AM, Ryan Geckler said:

If you are using cross coupling, it shows both lit up.

Yeah but the RCVR ON only lights up on the freq the aircraft is actually on, while the XMIT ON OTHER and RCVR ON lights up on the cross coupled freqs, doesn’t it?