With there being work done with the flight plan form, understanding ti correctly the coming (presently beta) FPL form only allows ICAO equipment code format.
At the moment, FAA codes are (still…) incorrectly converted to nonsense ICAO codes making little sense. for example /L gives VGDW/C…
"Vatsim Developers are not planning on changing the standard conversion to a practical one, but insist on using the “official FAA conversion”. That was in October 2023.
With the future of the FPL form, is the FAA format to be entirely abolished, or what is the present situation and the planned future for the FAA codes?
Yes, once the “old flight plan form” on myVATSIM is removed and the Beta becomes the default, FAA codes will not be officially used anymore. There’s a change that will be published soon to the beta form warning users in case they use a single letter on the Equipment code that also happens to be a valid FAA code (S for instance).
However, ATC clients like Euroscope still have some issues, and sometimes overwrite the valid equipment code with VGDW/C incorrectly. This is something that would need to be fixed on their end.
Hm okay, I was told that this was a conversion being done server side, offering ATC clients to view either FAA or ICAO equipment string from the FSD feed no matter the type of code(s) filled by the pilot. (e.g. in Euroscope under General Setting there is an option to “Get FP equipments in ICAO format”)
It’s also done on the client in some cases.
The L → VGDW/C conversion can happen due to multiple factors right now:
A pilot using an old version of vPilot and selecting L as the equipment code.
A pilot using the old form on the website and putting L as the equipment code.
Swift? I have no idea if they allow pilots to use FAA equipment codes
Euroscope - this is what I imagine is happening, based on multiple reports from users: Euroscope pulls the correct ICAO equipment code from the network, changes to FAA code L internally (even with the “Get FP equipments in ICAO format” option selected) at some point, and converts back to ICAO VGDW/C before sending it back to FSD when the controller makes changes to the flight plan. I’m not sure if this is caused by Euroscope itself, some plugin like TopSky, or both.
