Hi. I been flying in FSX for years now but rarely ever used the ATC directions in my flights. Now I find it fun to contact and follow directions all the way to an ILS landing (just learned how to do that) But I experienced 2 issues recently. 1- while flying in Hawaii the ATC people kept passing me off back and forth what seemed for no reason than to torture me. 2- I followed an IFR in the airbus from Miami to Cuba and on one of the last waypoints, I had trouble getting the plane to decend making me miss the glideslope (was way too high). #2 happened to me twice and I’m starting to wonder if there’s a bug when following ATC directions in some cases.
Another question- can we fly an IFR without using ATC? In this sim’s infant stage I don’t 100% trust them It’s nice talking to them but I would like to cut them off and continue if I have to without canceling my IFR plans.
Anytime I have tried an IFR flight in the Airbus using ATC I find that the approach is usually too high. Always seem to have to do a missed approach and fly around to lose altitude before having another go at intercepting the ILS.
I agree that ATC is sometimes a little late with their descend instructions, but if you check the flight plan’s altitudes at the last few waypoints, it may help to alert you. But the real key is dialing in and activating your new managed altitude the instant it is given to you by ATC. Just like in real life, you need to stay ahead of the plane and be ready for each instruction.
In the past week I have made several flights into both KLAX and KJFK using the ILS and auto land features … it can work well except for the final flare. You may need to help this a little to avoid banging into the runway.
#1 recurrent problem since FSX : IRL, when you follow the boundary between 2 control zones, both ATC agree on which of them will provide you the service. MFS ATC can’t do that, and keep on switching. #2 no answer. I haven’t experimented that, but I don’t fly IFR.
And YES, you can fly IFR without ATC. Not IRL, but imo MFS ATC is so mediocre that it’s better to do without it.
They brought the same logic from FSX into MSFS lol. The default ATC is pretty basic and makes bad calls.
Only suggestion I have is if you want offline ATC is to try out Pilot2ATC. It changed the game for me as far as offline ATC goes. Nice Map too.
I have a question in this area if you don’t mind. I had this situation - I was flying GPS in the Longitude and ascended just as the flight path required, all handled perfectly by the autopilot. I was outside of Las Vegas and ATC instructed me to descend to 7800 feet or something. I went into the Garmin and changed the altitude of that leg of the flight plan to 7800 and entered it, but nothing happened - I didn’t begin descent. I had to manually begin to descend using the autopilot. I know I missed a step, but I don’t know what that is.
I’ve had a ton of flights with ATC that have been great. Couple tips:
You don’t have to stop for all the altitude assignments on the way up. They are a bit late to assign next altitude and you can blast through on climb with no issues so you don’t have to keep leveling off.
The complete opposite is true on descent. If you blast through an altitude assignment on decent they won’t give you any instructions until you hit that altitude. Also I find descending at 2000 FPM in jets and Turbos will often get you where you need to go at the right pace.
Go to the top menu and select the pilot with the hat and “assign radio to AI.” I often do this in cruise as I don’t want to handle handoffs all day especially if they go handoff happy. It also works great for entire flights really although it’s hard to tune ATIS… AI will fight you over frequencies so I often turn it on/off a few times in a flight.
They won’t assign you proper STAR altitudes. If I want to follow chart altitude assignments I will “request a different altitude” which works really well even in a descent .
Assign keyboard button “1” to trigger on joystick. 90% of communications are the 1 button. Especially on busy landings I’ll just keep pulling that thing while dealing with everything else or handoff to AI.
I just flew from Cuba to Jamaica. I had to ignore ATC once they started giving me like 3 altitude instructions back to back as I got closer to the destination. After they cut me off for not acknowledging I just continued while manually descending and setting speed and had a great ILS landing. I’m gonna look into those charts so I can plan ahead for my altitudes on my own by writing them down as suggested. Any suggestions for these kinds of charts?
I fly almost exclusively trips of 1000 miles plus in the airbus. I always fly IFR and I agree that there seems like a lot of frequency changes there really aren’t. I am a retired air traffic controller in the US. Perhaps your problem is with a particular aircraft/autopilot? I find the A320 to be a very nice aircraft for the most part.
If you get fed up of all the enroute handoffs, just hand ATC over to AI co-pilot Charlie for a while. Nice thing is that you can check back on what’s going on in the text window … something that you can’t do in real world
Just watch out for the barometric pressure updates … apparently Charlie doesn’t know how to adjust that!
In fact, Charlie is flying me North as I write this…
Oh for sure, I make my first officer do the comms. “It’s the only way to fly” I do wish I could look at the radio and see the frequencies updated there.
I fully endorse @FlipperJeans470 and the use of Pilot2ATC.
The in SIM ATC is a work in progress with huge potential but as it is now it’s frustrating to use.
Pilot2ATC will knock you back $65 and you need to have FSIUPC 7, free till October, running with it too. But since the update yesterday, it works really well.
It has quite a step learning curve but there are 2 videos by clumsy on YouTube which will get you pretty much set up and running.
It’s nice talking to them but I would like to cut them off and continue if I have to without canceling my IFR plans.
