ICAO - EU - UK ATC Phraseology Mod V3.0

ICAO - EU - UK ATC PHRASEOLOGY MOD


BACKGROUND

As a real world airline captain, former flight instructor & radiotelephony instructor I know all about the importance of proper ATC phraseology and became quite bothered with the MSFS implementation of it. Therefore I have completely re-written the ATC text-to-speech to reflect correct ICAO phraseology for both VFR & IFR flights. I’ve included some Eurocontrol recommendations but the overall differences from ICAO are minor.

I have reached the limit now what I can achieve with the current ATC system as it is lacking options and features to make the phraseology 100% correct, but overall I think it is a big improvement over the default ATC. Items which I could not include due to missing functionality are still included in the text in between brackets in the ATC window, just not in the text-to-speech.


DEMO FLIGHT

Note: I identified two bugs while making this video which I corrected, upon frequency change to tower the “descent to altitude 4000 ft” clearance was only in the readback. The second bug concerns the missed approach handover: “passing altitude 2600 ft, climbing to altitude 2600 ft”.


VFR EXAMPLE


IFR EXAMPLE


RADIOTELEPHONY MANUAL

I’ve included my 100+ page complete guide to proper radiotelephony! I wrote the first version of this years ago and it has been used extensively in real world flight training. Its part of a way bigger project I’ve been working on during my “COVID off time”. It includes tons of real world examples!


DOWNLOAD LINK


LIST OF CHANGES

  • Overall tweaks and improvements.
  • More customization options added.
  • Installer can be run as administrator again.

Any questions or suggestions please comment below!

Kind regards,

Nijntje

95 Likes

“continue as planned” needs to go ASAP! Good work, will look forward to this.

2 Likes

As planned or as filed is not gonna be solved by simply changing the text to speech, same as the inHg vs hPa and transition altitudes. There are limitations unfortunately…

“ready for DEPARTURE”

2 Likes

Also have to get rid of the annoying type B callsign abbreviations, in Europe those are never used unless there is chance of callsign confusion.

1 Like

You might want to coordinate with:

Furthermore, please allow me suggesting this: since each update might change the ATC phraseology file semantics and/or entries, you might want to publish the mod in a “scriptable” form (say PowerShell script) doing find/replace into the content so that whatever the next version update, most of the mod entries can slip back into it.

3 Likes

Well yeah, lots of work in progress on that end. I’ve been a RTF instructor so I’ll just change it how I think it should be correct and then let everybody shoot at it.

1 Like

Great to hear someone is working on this! Australia/Asia/China phraseology I can help with (in English of course).

3 Likes

Well, good luck with the project, any improvements are better than the current system! Cheers.

I will make an initial version and then everybody can shoot at it.

2 Likes

“climb to altitude” could also be “initial climb”. I’m sure I hear that way more often on live radio.

“for taxi contact ground” is something that I probably never heard on live ATC radio but rather just “contact ground”.

I’m also quite sure that “after departure contact” is somewhat wrong as you would actually call departure sector during departure.

1 Like

Officially it is “climb to altitude … ft” or “climb FL …”. Normally this is part of the SID anyway and delivery will never give you any other initial altitude, tower might.

After start-up some airports hand-off immediatelly to ground this way, in FS2020 there are two options, one of which I indeed used “contact ground” the other “for taxi contact ground”. The latter is used to stay on delivery / apron frequency until ready to taxi.

The whole contact after departure never happens in real life. I noticed that even though the frequency is given during en-route clearance ATC still hands you over so I’ll delete it entirely.

I’m just saying that if I would make an ATC phraseology mod I’d concentrate on crunching messages down. I personally would prefer “everyday” shortened phraseology over “official” but much longer messages as they would clog up the frequency easily, especially in crowded areas.

Just listen to all the ATC recordings on channels like VASaviation - controllers rarely stick to the official phraseology 1:1 so going down that road would actually make such a mod more realistic.

Just my two knots.

2 Likes

Jup, I’ve been a RTF instructor so I tend to stay close to the official phraseology but I’ll make some short cuts here and there. I’m multiple iterations further compared to the photo I added yesterday.

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Do you have any knowledge on how to do this? I have no programming experience.

I’ve changed this to “continue as cleared” and “flight planned route”, its the best I can do.

Implemented :+1:

2 Likes

Just to find a way to distribute it now, I think I have something workable :+1:

3 Likes

Looking forward to trying it out and I’m sure many in the community will be grateful for your efforts! Cheers.

Check your DM :wink:

1 Like