Guys, calm down… introducing additional CTAF frequencies resembles reality a bit closer on the network, that’s true, and it’s definitely not like the moon falling on earth…
I personally cannot really understand how one can be so obsessed over something like this.
Sorry about that… ur absolutely right sir
Very immature of me 
I know it goes without explanation, but it should be stated again:
CTAF is NOT UNICOM; additionally, not every airport has UNICOM. Now, that needs some explaining.
At a given towered field (I’ll use KLAS and PANC for my examples), they do not have a CTAF, because they are always open; however, in the cases where they have closed (for example, when KLAS had to close during a COVID outbreak, or when an earthquake closed PANC), the CTAF was the combined tower frequency. In KLAS’ case, it was 119.9; in PANC’s case, it was 118.3.
For both of those airports, the UNICOM frequency is 122.95. See how that varies?
I’ll use another example: KSMO and KLAX.
KSMO closest at 9pm LT. At that point, the CTAF is the Tower frequency, 120.1. LAX doesn’t close; if it ever had to, it will use the combined tower frequency at that time (which would be depicted in the ATIS or given by the TRACON).
Both airports use 122.95 as their UNICOM.
So as one can see, remaining on a single UNICOM frequency and using that as CTAF would be a problem, especially if both airports are within range of each other. SMO is 5nm north of LAX.
Also, if need be, for a given airport that may or may not be closed, a controller can post the ATIS for that field (if the field has ATIS capability) and note what the CTAF is there. For example, when KVGT closes at 9pm LT, their ATIS states:
Common Traffic Advisory Frequency and pilot-controlled field lighting frequency is 125.7. For further information, contact Las Vegas approach control on xxx.xx in the air or on xxx.xx if on the ground.
125.7 is the tower frequency at KVGT.
So we can definitely see the need of using CTAF, but it requires the pilot knowing and reading the charts for the airports in question to know what that CTAF is. We should be all for that, as it brings in the realism we need for this on the network.
BL.
Well, if you had actually flown on the network in the past years, you would know that the way Unicom 122.8 currently works, you would indeed hear SMO and LAX traffic on the frequency or in the Bay Area hear departing traffic from SFO in Oakland and vice versa. Never considered that a problem, it’s not like there is tons of traffic in Unicom areas. Also we don’t have ATIS at uncovered airport and there is no “you would get CTAF frequency from TRACON”, as on Vatsim TRACON would cover the airport top-down as well.
And because it was posted further above, no you don’t hear all of the US on that frequency, it’s range limited to something like 30 miles and while flying on the network for 2000 hours in the past 2 years, I never heard a private conversation on Unicom (the range limitation helps exactly against that… now why it is, that they have me read text messages from 300 miles away, I don’t know, but ok).
A few days back someone opened a thread about “Should I still be on Unicom, noone calls in”, and this is indeed a problem. Is making things more complicated (by not only making people look up things in charts they might not use, but outside of charts, does that make it more likely they are going to look it up?) going to make any of this problem better? We are not switching to a real life procedure at Bravo airports which would be some kind of an argument, we are just moving from a simple non rl procedure to a more complicated non rl procedure. More complicated means more room for error. At the moment, we might have 3 dudes calling in on 122.8 and 2 silent flyers who will just depart. Now we can end up with the 2 silent pilots but then one pilot still on 122.8 because he missed the change, one on the CTAF frequency and one on the other tower frequency, because he just remembered “first frequency listed in the charts”. Will this really be better?
Most of these non callers will indeed rather be flying the standard MSFS A320neo from / to Bravo Airports than fly VFR to a CTAF field, so this is where the problem is located. As someone who also likes to fly into these Bravo airfields (which some here might not be and it’s absolutely fine), I would still like to know what happens around me. And from the experience flying and controlling hundreds of hours on the network these past years, I’m not sure this is going to make things better.
(And again I’m all for using CTAF where there is a CTAF frequency in the charts. This is solely about big class bravo airports)
Well said. I’d also like to add a few other considerations which may not necessarily all apply to the US but seeing as this might become a global thing if the trial succeeds they are nevertheless important to think about.
What do we do about airports where there is no usable real world frequency? There are many military airfields that exclusively use UHF frequencies which, as far as I know, AfV is not capable of (and even if it is, most sims and aircraft have no UHF capability).
How do we deal with airports where charts direct VFR and IFR traffic to different frequencies? For example, here in Germany, there are two airfields (EDDH and EDDS) which have separate Tower positions for VFR traffic (which would deal with all VFR traffic that’s not directly in the circuit or on the runway system), so VFR charts will tell VFR pilots to call on frequency A and IFR pilots on frequency B.
What can pilots do if the chart material they have doesn’t give them enough information to figure out which frequency to use (which can happen especially in places where the AIP or at least parts of it are not publicly and/or freely available)? I mean, we can of course simply say “well, then you can’t fly there, choose another airport”, but there are many cases where one can find enough information to be reasonably compliant with the CoC today but may not be able to remain compliant if the rules regarding unicom are changed globally.
The answer to all of these would be to have a central database where all these frequencies are listed and pilots can easily find which frequency is used as an advisory frequency here on VATSIM when there’s no ATC coverage. The VATSIM AIP can fulfill that role, but it would require that there actually is information on every airfield in the entire world and currently we are very, very far away from that, so facility engineers would face a lot of work to implement every single airfield in their AoR before such a change can take place. It is also problematic in two other ways: firstly, it would require a lot of maintenance as frequency changes are not too common if you have hundreds, maybe thousands of airfields to look at and these changes may not always be well communicated by the responsible authorities, so every AIRAC, facility engineers would have to tediously go through every single airfield to see if there was a frequency change (otherwise, we’d end up with a situation where charts may say one thing and the VATSIM AIP another, potentially putting people on different frequencies without any one of them doing anything wrong); secondly, there are many airfields around the world without an ICAO- or otherwise official code and I don’t think the VATSIM AIP currently allows for full name entries in that way. Additionally, I don’t like the idea of adding another required window/tab for flying on VATSIM, although I could see a potential solution to this particular point in simply adding a new command along the lines of .ctaf ICAO to pilot clients that people can use in lieu of the VATSIM AIP.
Ultimately, I think the easiest way would be to have people use the published advisory frequency at uncontrolled airfields and 122.800 (or some other, globally uniform frequency) at controlled ones. The only problem that would arise with this solution would be HX fields - most places already treat those as H24 on VATSIM and I don’t think there are any that require their controllers to simulate real world operating hours, but some at least allow their controllers to do so if they wish. If VATSIM took a clear stance on this point, any potential confusion would be ruled out with those as well: if HX fields are to be treated as H24 everywhere on VATSIM, then people have to always use 122.800 as an advisory frequency - if HX fields’ operating hours are to be simulated everywhere on VATSIM, then people have to use 122.800 during operating hours and the CTAF outside of operating hours; although I think treating them as H24 is the much easier solution.
It would also have the added benefit of keeping it simple for the more casual users who mostly fly jetliners at bigger airports while also allowing the people who fly a lot of GA aircraft at smaller uncontrolled fields who are usually the people that enjoy a very high level of realism and are more likely to actually know whether a field is controlled or not to realistically simulate the use of advisory frequencies at those fields.
How would that happen? AFAIK there are no CTAF outside USA.
They may have different names or work slightly differently (e.g. like here in Germany where all fields - at least for the time being - have at least some form of AFIS, even if they’re uncontrolled), but the concept of advisory frequencies for uncontrolled aerodromes is very common throughout the world, so it can definitely translate to many other places around the world; and this is even more true if we want to change the advisory frequency used for controlled airfields during times of no coverage (unless we make things even more complicated by expecting pilots to find out which areas use the real world advisory frequencies and where they have to use 122.800 instead).
This seems to be addressed to me. Apologies for what follows if I’ve misunderstood that.
First, you seem to not know that, while a tower-closed CTAF is often the tower freq… It also often isn’t. Not even in the US, and of course that’s only one country. You can’t go making global assumptions off of something that you saw on one flight.
Have I ever flown before… Did you suppose I stole my profile picture from the Internet somewhere? I’m a captain at a legacy US airline. I’ve got about 18k hours, multiple type ratings, I’ve been a check airman for years, and on my days off I voluntarily teach tail wheel, Stearman transition, aerobatics, and UPRT.
With that out of the way… I suggested once before that you tone down the attitude. I understand that you are not yet an adult, but I also gather from your posts that you do do some flying. I’ve been telling people this for 30 years, and it’s never not been true: nothing, absolutely nothing, will kill you faster in an airplane than an ego. If you manage not to kill yourself, you’ll never have much of a career at this if you use that kind of rhetoric in reality, because you’ll never make it through an interview, because no one will want to fly with you. This is very much a team sport.
Just something to think on. As far as the CTAF issue… Yes, if a CTAF is not published on a Jepp chart then having to look it up elsewhere is very much unrealistic busywork… Because there is not a time in reality that this would happen. If the airport has a CTAF (full or part time) it’ll be on the chart, like every other freq. If it’s not there, then no CTAF is used… Ever.
You can find problems with everything……. If you try hard enough
We haven’t even tried this yet…… let’s try it before hating it
Maybe I’ll try it and not like it then change my mind…… or maybe you will
I get sick of staying on one frequency ALL THE TIME……. I am looking forward to being able to touch my radio dials for once
If you have flown in class D airspace RL then you will definitely have tuned at least the comms radios. If that doesn’t happen in VATSIM for you then that’s extremely strange…
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I normally change frequencies alot on where I fly…(US for GA and Europe/US for jetliners)
When there is no controller i mean
I fly in uncontrolled airspace a LOT
And the best part, or least boring part, of that is when you change frequency?
It’s more that I like flying in my home airport and it is not often controlled.
Wouldn’t it be even more realistic to prefer to fly in controlled airspace? And if you really prefer uncontrolled airspace, why did you join VATSIM?
It’s more that I like flying in my home airport and it is not often controlled.
I fly in controlled a lot when I fly with my friend…