Some help with ATC

I've wondered the same thing. I have come to the conclusion that the ATC is bugged a bit on that one. As far as I know, you can't establish a connection untill it becomes available in the "nearest airport list" menu

I think the main reason being generally you do not talk to the airport (tower) until you are within about 30 miles under IFR. Approach and TRACON/En-route frequencies are used. Also under IFR you will have filed a FP so you will know your route. If you are flying VFR you should have a VFR chart but it would be good if you were able to talk to a controller and request assistance. I guess however this would be a huge challenge for the guys and gals at MS.

I don't know if this will work or not but it's worth a try ........ :-

If it works this would apply to routes that you fly regularly, rather than to new routes.

- Fly a route as normal (IFR).
- When you get close to your Arrival Airport (ie.. it appears on the Nearest Airport List), note down the Frequency that appears in the ATC box to tune that Airport's Approach.... (ie "Tune Manston Approach on 120.15").

- Now finish that flight and take off again, somewhere a long way from that last destination Airport.

- TRY MANUALLY ENTERING THE FREQUENCY INTO COMM1 RADIO....

- Will this connect you to the Airport, even though you are still a long way off ?

I am at work so don't know if this idea wil work or not but worth a try. If not, I'd agree with PH that in the real world all of the Approach and arrival Vectors and Info would be obtained when you are close to the arrival Airport, rather than further out.

On the same subject - sorry for jumping in the thread, but I'm doing it anyway -

Whenever I am at cruise level in IFR flight, some 50 nm before I expect ATC to tell me to start my descend, I look up the ATIS, Approach and Tower frequencies of my destination airport on the GPS, and tune them in COM2 and COM1 - standby so I won't need to attent to that while doing the approach.
But problem is many airports have multiple Approach, Tower and even ATIS frequencies. As I'm ATC-Newbie 😂 firstly; Why are there so many different frequencies? Especially Approach: I've seen airports with TWO runways, that have more than 10 approach frequencies
Does this represent real-life?.....And is there any other way of finding out which freq. you'll have to use, other than waiting untill ATC tells you? Fair enough you can hit 1 for auto-tune, but hey... 😕
When going to "Waypoint" pages on the GPS, and you select the destination airport and go to the page that displays a 'picture' of the airport, (second page within the WPT group?) it always lists one ATIS and one Tower frequency, so I figured these would be the "main" ones and tuned these in, but alas, that failed. I had to use different ones from Mr. ATC

I'm curious, how does this work in real life, and why are there so many towers and approaches?

Oh BTW, Got my first KLM repaint done fine 👍 and I successfully installed a 767-300ER...
That is one beautiful plane btw as soon as I finished my roundtrip with the 737 and am back at EHAM (I'm now somewhere 300 nm North of Moscow) I'm going to try see if I can get her Airborne.
She still needs some rework on her panels and painting though, so I'll have to wait a bit until mechanics are done with her 😀

I did try it .The planned flight was from KSEA (Seattle) to CYYJ (Victoria)
I did tuned up my comm1 to Victoria freq. On my way I got several ATC instructions among them :
1.To tune to Whidbey (probably center)
2.From range of some 30 miles from Victoria Air Port to contact Victoria Approach (instructed by Whidbey)

The question is if 30 miles before landing is enough to get instructions which run way is the active one and where are u in waiting list if is any and a long other issues . I just calculated that it gives some 10 minute to get organized with a heavy for touch down . I see that ARC-DC has some doubts on that to. BTW: I found that at FS-95 they used to create a contact with the tower by hitting ENTER key (I still have the manuals. I don't know how my wife she did not find them)