WHO ARE YOU?... Calling all Dev's

General Discussion & Community Support General Discussion
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I have noticed that if I momentarily roll the ‘units’ [right hand digit] of my transponder frequency readout down by 1 and then back, I get a transponder confirmation notice from ATC.
Try it for yourself!

I also believe that in ‘real life’, there are certain transponder frequencies that are ‘reserved’ for things such as emergencies or radio failures.

My old, favourite plane of choice, the Money Bravo has ‘recognition lights’ fitted as standard.
And occasionally a fellow Money pilot and I would [keep it clean] flash each other, mid flight!

So how about Asobo, or a Dev [for that matter] implement a ‘HI THERE’ transponder frequency protocol for us all to use?

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IIRC, the rhyming mnemonics for those transponder settings are:

75 taken alive
76 lost my fix
77 going to heaven

for 7500 (hijack), 7600 (I’m lost), and 7700 (mayday!!) respectively.

1200 is the generic one-size-fits-all to identify VFR flights.

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Haha. Excellent. rhyming mnemonics have got me through many an exam before now!

And yes, I know 1200 is, as you say, a standard freq.
but I am intimating at is a way to use one other transponder freq as a sort of
in flight, inter aircraft ‘HELLO’ signal.
To acknowledge, say, a known fellow ‘flyer’ from the same town, for example.

To be honest, I am surprised we don’t already have such an informal system!
It would increase the level of immersion a little, if nothing else.

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Squawk code 7600 doesn’t mean you are lost. It indicates that you have had a communication radio failure. In that case, ATC will usually make a blind call asking you to IDENT if you can hear them. If they see a response, they’ll know you can receive, but not transmit - otherwise they’ll assume you have lost both receive and transmit ability.

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The transponder isn’t used for pilot to pilot communication, but a multicom frequency of 122.9 can be. Notice it’s conveniently only one 1/10th away from many uncontrol airports’ 122.8. Seriously doubtful this support is included with the current state of the sim, but maybe it can be be as it matures.

I’ll bow out now because both my memory and a dusty Machado classic are quite outdated.

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Your memory and your flight manual, outdated or otherwise, are welcome here.

Thanks very much.

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While there’s no inter-pilot XPDR comms, I would love to see a global push to talk unicom when in radius :slight_smile:

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In many parts of the world VFR is squawk 7000 which makes a lot of sense since the 3 other special codes are also in the 7k range

I’ve always been told it this way:
75 - man with knife (hijack)
76 - radio needs fix (comms loss)
77 - pray to heaven (emergency)

Using transpinder for anything else would break immersion for me (especially since there is no real way to see other people’s squawk setting)

A talking frequency could be nice (and realistic)!

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7600 means communication failure, not being lost…

Anyway in Europe 123.450 is the dedicated air-to-air frequency, they should try to implement that.

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You guys should definitely use those squawks on vatsim.

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Do you know, I have been flying sims for what …30 and some years, and I have never been on Vatsim!
I have often thought of doing so but never quite got around to it.
Maybe I should.

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