Re: Comm question

[Brett_Henderson]

I'll approach this as if it were real.. then you can adapt to the sim..

If you've got flight following, it's almost like an instrument flight, in that they're watching you, and expect a request before you change plans. You can monitor any channel you like, if it doesn't distract you..

In real life, you could just plain cancel flight following (they'll say "frequency changed approved, squawk VFR")... And then you could contact the tower where you want closed traffic (or just announce it on that airport's CTAF, if it's uncontrolled). You cannot

[Brett_Henderson]

Acknowledgement and permision to enter airspace, depends on the airspace.

For Delta airspace, all you need is for the tower to have responded to you by your N-number.. Even if it's just to say "stand-by".. The fact that they say your number, is an OK to enter.

For Charlie airspace it's about the same. More times than not, their first response will be a vector.. You need some sort of "direction" from them.. not just an acknowledgement (and they know that.. so 99 times out of 100, they'll either give you a vector to enter.. or a vector to remain clear until they can fit you in.

For Bravo airspace... you need to hear the EXACT phrase, "Cleared to enter the Bravo airspace".

[beaky]

More specific to the sim:
It's clunky, but the solution in general is the obvious one: cancel FF, go to the "Nearest Airport" list, and take it from there. It's not much different from real life, although as Brett points out, a real controller might be more helpful.
Remember- FF is for traffic advisories only, they're not controlling you between airspaces. You can cancel anytime you feel OK giving up that radar coverage.

But I see your problem is not so straightforward...
Not sure about within the sim, but I see on AirNav that 120.3 is the freq for Baton Rouge Approach; the Tower freq (and the CTAF when the tower is closed) is 118.45.
If the sim is actually using 120.3 as the tower freq, then that is what you use in the pattern there. Otherwise, there should be an option to contact Tower on 118.45... never flew there in FS9, so I dunno... maybe you heard it wrong?

[Brett_Henderson]

MSFS ATC is a little "off", but it's about as accurate as you can get, without devoting an entire software title to it (and probably a seperate computer). What is "kinda" realistic about it is.. that you won't be handed off to a tower during either FF or an IFR flight. Just like for real; your only communications with towers, will be while taking off.. or asking to land. Once you take off, you'll be talking to a succesion of Controls(sub-divisions of major Centers) and Approaches (as you pass near larger airports)... Your very first contact after taking off is called "Departure", but it's the same thing as "Approach" .. sometimes sharing the same frequency. At larger airports there are more than one "Approach/Departure", depending on from which direction you're departing or approaching.

We shuttle planes from KOSU (Delta airspace) over to KCMH (Port Columbus International Charlie airspace) and back for maintenance all the time... It takes SEVEN seperate conversations to get in/out of Charlie airspace... add FOUR for Delta airspace.. and one ATIS per airport, and wev'e got 13 radio operations