Talking to ATC

[hiflyphil]

Hi

Is it possible to talk to the tower of an airport before you reach it, it seems you have be nearly right on top of an airport sometimes, especially if its a densly populated airfield area, before it appears in your menu of airports.  Obviously flying a big plane takes a while to line up, I like to give myself at least 20 miles for the operation. but I can only get in touch with the tower from about 10 miles out. Now if you've approached an airport with the intention of landing on a certain airstrip and when you get there they direct to land from the opposite direction, that means having to set yourself all up again.
I've tryed tuning the radio manually to the tower but I dont see any landing options appear.

Phil (still flying happy  :D)

[Smoke2much]

Unfortunately I've never worked out a way to do this.  It's best to set the wind direction appropriate to the runway direction you want to land on ie so that you will land into the wind.  This is the only way of controlling the operational runway in 2k2 that I know of.

Will

[hiflyphil]

yeah which means listening to ATIS and trying to get the bearings into your head, which ways the airfield point, which ways the coming.  :o its headspinning some days.

Phil

[Craig.]

but you cant even tune into the ATIS until right on top of it,
or am i the only one who cant, it makes proper airport procedures impossible as by the time you have all the ATIS your down on the runway before you can even request a landing clearance

[hiflyphil]

No your not wrong, and is it me but when your landing isn't it proper procedure to give wind direction along with landing instrunctions  ???

Phil

[BFMF]

Just open up your map, and look at the frequencies for the airport you're planning on landing at. If it has a weather advisory station, get the frequency and you can listen to it, while getting all the info you need

[Woodlouse2002]

you can talk to the airport at a range of 30 miles.

[hiflyphil]

........but if theres about 30 airfields around the major airport that you want the menu will list the 9 closest to you, and you've got to fly through the nest to the egg.

Phil

[J G Parker]

You can pull in ATIS as far out as 60 miles in most cases.  That will give you the active.  I put the ATIS frequency into COM2 (and turn on COM 2 in the radio stack of my Garmin 530) and keep contact with Center and Flight Following on COM 1 (not all a/c have 2 com radios).  COM 2 will be silent for a while but will suddenly light up when I hit its range and begin indicating the active.  I select an approach to the active on my GARMIN (or from approach plates from Clearance Unlimited's website) and begin following the approach.  Normally, I still won't see the airport in the ATC menu until 10-20 miles out (almost too late, as u pointed out, if you want to be lined up for the active ILS and don't already know it), but I am already inbound anyways and I then I just request a full stop. They seem to 'know' my approach, and just give me the final instructions and, at the FAF, clearance to land.  Things at non-towered airports are simpler of course.

One thing to factor in is the ILS/FAF intercept height and plan ahead so you have time to descend.  I use STARS from Clearance Unlimited site if available and they include arrival routes and heights. The Garmin provides arrivals too, but they don't have vertical guidance like plates do.  I use FS Nav also and it gives obstacle heights along the flight plan, but I have found they can be off.  Last nite I made an approach from Las vegas to San Diego without looking at a real plate.  When I planned my route in FSNAv it appeared that the highest point anywhere near this segment of the of my flight plan was 4500.  I had leveled off at 6500 and was working on setting up my approach  when I noticed the outline of the side of a mountain looming ahead (it was dark outside) and my ground radar said I was only 500 feet above ground level.  I had to pull up to clear.  Spilled the virtual coffee and wet the virtual pants.

[kennzaflyin]

just a thought, i myself have found no way to contact the atc before the 10nm mark.  A good theory though and most rela world pilots will confirm. at least with the world of GA. In the real world it is common rule of thumb that you contact the tower or unicom freq (uncontrolled airports) about ten miles from the airport you intend to land.  Don't know if the folks at M$ made it that way in the game for that reason or it's just a coincedense. Who Knows?

[hiflyphil]

Could be, but that was my original dilema, 10 miles is not a whole lot of time to set up an approach.

Not to worry, as I keep practicing my landings at different airfields/ports I'm sorta getting to know where their gonna tell me to land.

Phil

[J G Parker]

yea, familiarity helps.  but as I said, you can always find out the active runway about 60 miles out by tuning ATIS for thr airport.  You just can't communicate with Tower at that distance.  Of course, if there is no ATIS at the airport, that won't help, but most have ATIS at least.