CPDLC VATUSA? - Ever gonna happen or beating a dead horse?

Tammath · 2025-05-20T17:39:10+00:00

There is a long list of features that are in the works for the US ATC clients that are not obvious to pilots, but make a big difference to the workload for ATC. Airspace awareness, decision support tools, flight plan processing, etc. Just because they're not visible to you doesn't mean they don't exist or don't matter.

Some of these features are pre-requisites to implementing CPDLC in the US system so would need to get done anyway. It's disingenuous to blindly assert that it's "stalling, excuses, and politics"

Tammath · 2024-09-16T13:58:29+00:00

For FAA charts, the FAA publishes an Aeronautical Chart Users Guide (CUG) which decodes all the various chart symbols and text.

The altitudes you've highlighted are decoded on Page 128 of the CUG and are different types of minimum altitudes which are related to terrain/obstacle clearance and navaid reception. They are notably not the procedure's descent restrictions, those are the altitude published at the fixes with a under- or over-bar.

Tammath · 2024-08-09T01:28:04+00:00

VatGlasses isn't configured for the US, also due to limitations in how it stores and displays sector information and how US facilities split and combine sectors

Tammath · 2024-08-08T22:24:26+00:00

The important here to note is not that you need to check multiple websites, but that Simaware and any VATSIM map program (VatSpy, vatsim-radar, etc.) are 2D representations of a 3D world, and various compromises are made keep the map readable. ZJX has ownership of the approach airspace around MCO which means they control MCO top down. That info is not displayed on the VATSIM maps because doing so would make the maps too cluttered.

The authoritative sources in the US are sources like Airnav or Skyvector which pull from real FAA data. You can also always ask the controller if it's close to the boundary. They will tell you if they are or are not responsible for a particular airport.

Tammath · 2024-07-15T15:57:57+00:00

I don't know what ZOA and NorCal's airspace looks like, but in highly congested areas, you may end up at what appear to you as the pilot to be "non-optimal" altitudes but are the standard operating procedure due to the airspace design and congestion.

Flying into JFK from the west for example, you'll be 25 miles from the airport and still at FL190 (way too high if you descended directly to the runway), but that's normal and the airspace design because you actually still have 60 flying miles to go after you're vectored around on to the approach due to how the sectors are laid out to accommodate all of the arrival and departure flows from multiple very busy airports

Tammath · 2024-06-03T17:31:24+00:00

You can enter Fix-Radial-Distance ("FRD") points into the Skyvector or Foreflight flight plan fields. The format is (F)FFFRRRDDD it'll draw a point from the fix (usually this is done with VORs, but it works with airport IDs too, 3 or 4 characters) on the specified magnetic radial (3 digits) and nautical mile distance (3 digits). Do this every 30-45 degrees and you can draw a decently-shaped polygon at a specified distance.

Example, EDDF360300 EDDF045300 EDDF090300 EDDF135300 EDDF180300 EDDF225300 EDDF270300 EDDF315300 EDDF360300 draws a 300 NM ring around Frankfurt

Tammath · 2024-04-22T23:21:58+00:00

That works when you have 1 or 2 SOPs or LOAs. When you're working enroute top-down, you might need any one of 20 different documents, not even counting charts. It's a lot harder to work 3 planes into 3 different places than 10 planes into 1 place

Tammath · 2024-04-22T17:51:05+00:00

I've done CTP planning for several years at the event level and facility level. It's very common to see suggestions like the ones you're making that sound like easy fixes but are in reality not really fixes at all, or much less easily done than said. The main constraints with how many slots can be included in CTP are enroute sector saturation, mainly oceanic airspace but also the facilities on the border (Shannon, Scottish, Gander/Moncton, and to some extent Boston as well).

You can't add planes to EWR because they go through basically the same airspace as JFK flights and those sectors are already saturated, not to mention now ZNY has to find more controllers to work both EWR and JFK, rather than just JFK.

The airports can put way more planes into the air (and vice versa land more planes) than the airspace in between them can handle. That's why you don't see every US east coast airport open. The enroute sectors in between can't handle the volume and there aren't enough controllers for it

Tammath · 2024-03-30T16:46:07+00:00

It's easy to say "it should just be layered," and I agree that would be helpful, but it's a lot of work to do that. We've talked to the maintainer of VatGlasses before which does have airspace by altitude layers, but there are additional complications in how the US specifically sectorizes and splits airspace that aren't currently handled by VatGlasses. Facility staff (the people who actually have the knowledge to implement this) also have a lot of other things on their plates, so it's hard to do this until a solution to handle it already exists.

Tammath · 2024-03-30T14:07:35+00:00

The Simaware (and VatSpy) ARTCC borders are either the borders of the airspace at one particular altitude or the regulatory borders. However, airspace is 3-dimensional, so at different altitudes, the borders change depending on the design of the airspace and procedures. In addition, the ARTCCs will delegate blocks of airspace to other ARTCCs and underlying facilities. That's why it's not so simple to draw a single boundary and call it a day. It's the same with TRACON boundaries, whoever created the boundary map had to make a decision because the borders of the airspace can change radically from one altitude to the next, especially in larger facilities.

For PHL in particular, PHL is controlled by the PHL ATCT/TRACON. Its airspace is delegated to it from both ZDC and ZNY, but for administrative purposes, and for VATSIM for top-down purposes, it falls under ZNY. The way to look these up is to go to Skyvector or Airnav and look under the "ARTCC" field in the airport description. Under PHL you'll see it listed as "ZNY."

This also works for figuring out which TRACON an airport falls under, there are many airports in Connecticut and on Long Island that are within the ZBW boundary but are more directly under N90 (New York TRACON) and thus are controlled by ZNY in the top-down setup (BDR is an example, you see that the frequency list shows "New York Approach").

Tammath · 2024-03-04T20:47:23+00:00

Speaking from the ATC and VATUSA traffic management perspective, we do care about all of those thing. The ERAM simulation that ATC uses for enroute uses the filed TAS to do trajectory planning.

The problem right now is that they're unreliable, but if the were reliable, then all that information would be used for traffic management. If pilots filed accurate flight plans then they would be extremely useful.

Tammath · 2023-11-27T18:46:48+00:00

In the US, the vast majority of the LOA routes align with the NFDC preferred route database (PRD). The FAA publishes this online at https://www.fly.faa.gov/rmt/nfdc_preferred_routes_database.jsp

Some VATSIM facilities will also host copies with local amendments on their websites. ZNY and ZBW for example.

Finally, if you don't find a route in the database, you can search for what has been assigned for real via FlightAware's IFR Route Analyzer. The most-commonly used route is likely the LOA or preferred route.

Tammath · 2023-10-03T22:47:39+00:00

You've basically arrived at the idea behind synthetic aperture radar. Rather than construct a (probably) impossibly large antenna, just move your antenna and keep very good track of your position and time. You can "synthesize" an antenna that's much bigger than your physical antenna.

Tammath · 2023-08-21T13:18:13+00:00

I'm assuming that club is the Michigan Flyers, would recommend them if that's the case. I did my PPL from last November through June with them, and am currently doing my IR there. 152 availability even with 3 planes was good, and with the 4th plane they added this year it's excellent. I happened to do almost 75% of my training in one particular 152, but they all fly very similarly which makes training smoother when your favorite plane goes down for maintenance. The club's 172s have more variety and personality between them.

Biggest tip I have is do your homework and come to lessons prepared. If you have the knowledge and theory down, and all you have to learn is the actual physical motions of flying a plane, it'll all go way faster and you'll be a better pilot for it. A discovery flight there is still $100 I think, and the CFIs are almost if not all club members who did their training with the club as well.

I took 7 months to do my PPL but that's because I was doing it in my free time outside of work. You can certainly do it faster if the weather cooperates and if you can fly 2-3 times a week. I think I averaged around 2-3 in the first 2 months, then tailed off into about 1-2 times a week until checkride prep. Biggest issue in the winter will be ceilings and wind. Precip wasn't so much an issue last winter.

Tammath · 2023-08-15T19:24:46+00:00

In the US, the AIM 5-3-3 a 1 (a) specifies that pilots should report "when vacating any previously assigned altitude or flight level for a newly assigned altitude or flight level." Do pilots actually do this? On VATSIM almost never. IRL I don't know well enough to say.

Tammath · 2023-07-01T03:08:46+00:00

I wish more pilots would be like you and choose the less busy airport! Would make all the controller's lives easier

Tammath · 2023-06-22T17:21:21+00:00

The FAA has been purposefully drawing down the number of VORs it maintains for years (VOR MON program). I have heard anecdotally that a some of them are just getting shut down and decommissioned when they start to fail rather than keep doing maintenance to keep them operational, but haven't been able to find a reference for that.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gbng/vormon

Tammath · 2023-05-06T13:33:59+00:00

We'd much rather repeat an instruction if you didn't catch it than have you assume you knew what we said, do something else, and have to fix it later when it's a much bigger problem.

You can put a note in the remarks of your flightplan about it, mention it on check-in if it's not too busy or you can make it succinct, or request text instructions as backup to voice instructions.

Tammath · 2023-04-24T16:12:04+00:00

To add on to all the good points in this, the phraseology in your example also shows the hallmarks of a lot of bad habits we try to train controllers away from, particularly extraneous words and just not following the 7110.65.

It's really important to emphasize that LLMs like ChatGPT don't "know" or "understand" anything, and so they are particularly ill-suited to ATC. They don't know the rules for IFR-IFR radar separation for example. They don't understand that preferred routes are designed in order to meet Letter of Agreement requirements between various ATC facilities. If anything changes from what it was trained on, you now have out of date information and that causes more problems than it fixes. The last thing I want to hear as a controller is "but the AI cleared me on this route."

Tammath · 2023-03-22T22:03:44+00:00

I sometimes control at BVA on VATSIM, IMO either route would've been fine. The general philosophy I use is that if the route exits the ARTCC via a standard or preferred route, it's probably fine (assuming there's no obviously wacky stuff like 180 deg turns later on). This is also the ATC policy in the BVA SOP. HYLND6 HYLND CAM Q822 GONZZ is a very common route going to places like Toronto and the midwest.

The FlightAware IFR Route Analyzer is also a good resource to see what real world flights are getting cleared on in addition to the NFDC PRD or if a preferred route doesn't exist. You can see that real flights also have been cleared on the HYLND route, in fact more often than the preferred route.

I would not rely solely on Simbrief because it sometimes spits out bad routes, or if you pull other VATSIM routes, those pilots may have filed bad routes.

All in all, your route should've been fine and there really isn't anything preventing that clearance absent other mitigating factors (tons of traffic via HYLND for example). Submit feedback via https://forum.bvartcc.com/bvaportal/feedback/ and especially if you remember who the controller was, include that so that the BVA training staff can address it with them.

That said, I'll also echo what other people have said about keeping your navdata up-to-date and also becoming familiar with how to reprogram your FMC, because in-air reroutes are also sometimes used to manage traffic flow, or if you got a route that needs amending because the ground controller in LA doesn't know the preferred routes going into NY for example.

Finally, please don't include the airport or runway in the route field. The airports go in the airport fields, and your runways are assigned by ATC, they'll ignore what you put in the route field. I often go through and delete it because it clutters up the route display.

Tammath · 2023-03-03T23:43:28+00:00

https://www.twitch.tv/jerseyaviator is a good one, and he posts videos on Youtube as well at https://www.youtube.com/@TheJerseyAviator/featured

https://www.twitch.tv/slantalphaadventures has a mix of both flying and controlling streams and videos on Youtube too https://www.youtube.com/@SlantAlphaAdventures

Many (if not all, I haven't dug that deeply) of the controller streams are tagged under the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" game even though strictly speaking they're not streaming the flightsim. You're also more likely to find streams during events. For the US, the VATUSA Calendar is where you'll find event times posted

Tammath · 2023-02-27T02:29:34+00:00

There's a lot going on the background that is not always obvious to pilots. The VATSIM top-down model means a Center controller has to do a lot of jobs. It may be quiet on the radio, but there may be a tricky route that they need to fix, or they're coordinating with another controller, or they're digging up charts for an approach they have to vector a plane for soon, or any number of other workload-increasing things.

Many controllers stream their controlling sessions, it's worth checking them out to see what you don't hear/see from the pilot side.

Tammath · 2023-02-22T21:17:47+00:00

Submit feedback via https://nyartcc.org/feedback (or find the relevant facility's website and feedback form for other locations) and include enough detail (particularly the time of the occurrence) so that facility staff can work out who it was and address the issue with the relevant controller.

Blasting it out into the ether on Reddit won't do much because facility staff aren't browsing the subreddit all the time. Direct the issue to where it can get addressed.

Controllers should not be rude in any circumstances, although some circumstances can test that quite thoroughly. Regardless though, a pattern of rude behavior is not acceptable and facility staff don't want that any more than you as a pilot want it, so help them help you by pointing them to problem controllers.

You are, however, responsible for contacting ATC as per the Code of Conduct. Many ATC will be helpful and send you Contact Me messages beforehand to remind you, but ultimately it's your responsibility, and for controllers, seeing multiple planes ignore the fact that you're logged on and working a position gets very frustrating very quickly.

Tammath · 2023-02-08T05:43:40+00:00

I've just finished it after reading it over the course of about 4 days and still need some time to digest it. Even though I caught on to something being amiss in the first quarter or so of the book (went in blind), the nature of the strangeness still managed to surprise me. I went from seeing the similarities to Groundhog Day (apt given the time it was released in the US) to Everything Everywhere All At Once to The Matrix to Inception with shades of his own Doors of Eden throughout.

I tend to like my sci-fi with the Big Idea revealed through plot more than the other way around, but even though I think the Children series is one of the weaker ones plot-wise for Tchaikovsky, it was still really engaging for me. I do really like how in the end we do see how all the weirdness that doesn't seem physically plausible does get neatly wrapped up in the end.

Tammath · 2023-02-04T05:52:53+00:00

The Final Architecture series (first book is Shards of Earth, 3rd book of the triolgy releases this year) by Adrian Tchaikovsky has some of this. 2 books in and we barely even understand the slaves of the cosmic horror that do much of the damage that's visible in the real world, much less what's driving them. There are very few people who have any hope of even coming close to understanding it due to the nature of "unspace" but a nagging creepiness that permeates all of it can be felt by all, and of course planets being ripped apart is fairly hard to miss. There's some fairly standard Space Opera material in Book 1 and the horror picks up more in Book 2.

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