Unicom?

[Sam Bloom 906691]

I was at KORD this morning on the Unicom freq. and there was communications from traffic from as far away as Atlanta. Is this the supposed to be the case. Also, later while sitting at ORD the Atlanta center freq. cam up as having an active ATC. Should I use these distant ATCs if they are the only ones available? Or should I stick to Unicom while in the KORD area if no local ATC available? I'm new to VATSIM so bare with me.

[Dave Wild]

UNICOM coverage should be World wide AFAIK Sam which is why a bit of common sense is required when using it.

 

If around an airport your UNICOM message should start with the airpot identifier, so if at KORD you would start with "KORD traffic..", that alerts any other aircraft to watch out around KORD, all other aircraft can ignore the message. All too often on UNICON you see "On finals rwy 27", no indication of which airport so the message is meaningless.

 

The basic concept of UNICOM messages is 'State where you are and what you intend to do', there is no need to state who you are as your callsign is automatically entered in the text message.

 

If around an airport and there is other traffic then you will need to give more information than if in the cruise, in fact UNICOM messages in the cruise are of little use usually because there are rarely aircraft near you.

 

If you are using FSInn use its TCAS display to see if other aircraft are near, ServInfo is also useful but bear in mind it can be 10 15 minutes out of date.

 

There are numerous posts on this subject so do a search in the forum for UNICOM to get more info.

 

The highest level of ATC you should contact if there are no local controllers is the CTR controller for your area, for KORD this would be Chicago CTR, do not go outside Chicago as they will not be able to help you.

If a controller needs to talk to you he will send you a private message on UNICOM "Contact me on xxx.xx".

HTH