Those frequencies (Especially for airports that technically do not close) to be used for CTAF are listed in the AIP.
https://my.vatsim.net/pilots/aip
Also, if using vPilot, you can use the .ctaf command to get the CTAF for the field in question.
BL.
No problems, the rest of your post wasnt relevant to what i wntwd to say.
I didnt miss the point and please donât infer as such.
Seems like this is making VATSIM worse. Before a lot of people didnt use unicom. You have the same pilots not communicating still. Now the pilots that did communicate on Unicom before this are still using unicom while others are using ctaf. Just landed at DFW. Watched 2 aircraft depart without any announcements on either channel. This seems to be consistent on every flight. This has effectively made communication less.
That is a good point @854300 for a long time the proper use of 122.800 has been falling and is rarely used. Is the answer to a lack of communication by pilots to make it more complicated?
It will be interesting to see how will this end. I donât see a problem with using CTAF or UNICOM.
The problem is how do we get pilots to use CTAF when there already is a issue of not using UNICOM. Back in 2001 when i joined Vatsim i remember there was a lot more chatter from us pilots. Slowly over the years it started to disappear. Why i donât know. You hate to say it ,but is sounds like ,they donât care .
Pilots are arriving / departing / taxiing and not a word. To me that is the biggest problem.
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Because itâs now just a video game. Played, in many cases, by new members who seek thrills without having to expend any effort in developing any aviation skllls.
This is not VATSIMâs fault. I play chess online and the popularity of 3-minute Blitz games, where the whole game must be finished in 180 seconds, to add to the excitement at the obvious expense of chess precision, tells you all you need to know about that cohortâs mindset.
Just departed DFW. 2 of us there. I am on the CTAF channel making calls. After I depart I switch to unicom and I hear the other guy making his calls at DFW. This thing is doomed
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The âthingâ itself is not âdoomedâ. What worries the most IMO is the lack of discipline on the pilotsâ sideâŚ
If VATSIM decides to install some kind of mandatory pilot training programs some day (although this is widely believed to be âunpopularâ) I wonât be too surprisedâŚ
Its doomed in the fact that you had X amount of pilots using unicom before this. Now that means that group is now split so you have a portion of them still using unicom and the rest using ctaf while all the others that use neither continue making it less actual communication happening. I thought I read it was mandatory and I originally asked how it would been enforced. The only reply was from someone telling me to report it to a supervisor. No thanks
The mandatory training idea will never happen. In my 20 plus years here it has been mentioned and will never happen
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Actually, it HAS happened, through the New Member Orientation Course. But I agree that it s unlikely to be extended to include mandatory training and testing in the ability to manually fly, for example.
I also do not actually believe extended mandatory training courses for pilots will happen. But then it all âcirclesâ around the question how to âpushâ more pilots to use these CTAF frequencies. Granted, the trial has an estimated duration of (at least) 6 months, but it seems the split of UNICOM vs CTAF using pilots is a bigger problem (not speaking of these not even using UNICOM at all).
I already brought up a suggestion to include a hint regarding the CTAF trial everytime a pilot client is connected to the network, but havenât heard a reply so far (although it obviously doesnât solve the matter itself).
the new policy is essentially:
âuse the tower frequency if thereâs no published ctaf, and if theres multiple tower frequencies, use .ctaf to determine which one to use.â
anyone who cannot handle this minor change quite frankly should stay offline.
My instinct would be to provide the specific, rather focused observation Iâm about to share via a means set up to gather trial feedback. Iâve not found anything like that. Perhaps this forum is it. If you know of a better place to provide the feedback, Iâd appreciate a quick reply.
So, it might be in the unintended spirit of âYou wish to add something to our discussion, Dr. Ryan?â, that I offer the following detail 
:
The VATSIM AIP lists the CTAF frequency for Bermuda (TXKF) as 118.1 which is also the tower frequency. However, the Jepp 10-9 chart (navigraph) includes a separate entry for a CTAF to be used when the tower is âinopâ. Somewhat ironically, that frequency happens to be 122.8. The Bermuda AIP also lists 122.8 as the CTAF. The potential for confusion seems obvious, although I can imagine that it might not be all that difficult to address with a change to the VATSIM AIP. Whether there are other airports that publish a separate CTAF in this way that might not have made its way into the VATSIM AIP yet, I do not know.
This trial is limited to the US. Last time I checked Bermuda was not in the US, so it doesnât really matter whatâs marked as CTAF in the VATSIM AIP, as you will have to use 122.8 there regardless.
Many places havenât put much/any work into filling the VATSIM AIP, so I wouldnât rely on it too much (outside of getting CTAF frequencies for multiple TWR frequency US airports for this trial).
Yeah, perhaps youâre right. Itâs just a little ambiguous, because a US facility provides ATS in Bermuda when the local facilities are closed.
The VATSIM PTD has a pilot feedback team, and no doubt they are on it, if it is within their remit
OK. Great. Thank you.
And everybody who flies regularly on the network saw exactly that coming. Absolutely no surprise here.
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Not going to bore you by informing you that I was a real-world pilot for 30+ years until a medical issue took away my medical/PPL. Plus you really donât need to know that in my real life, I used Microsoft Flight Simulator 1982 version to help my navigation skills.
The real fact as I see it is that Vatsim still canât get people to use any radio frequency to report their intentions and positions. Get that solved, then worry about real-life radio frequencies when ATC is absent.
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How dare you bring common sense into the discussion?? That sort of thing is frowned upon here.
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