why ATC has to cover the whole oceans?

As a little trick to help you get around having to baby-sit the plane on your longer voyages...

Once you get to cruising altitude and get switched to a different center, confirm the frequency change, and then don't contact the new center. Your option for ATC will continue to change to contacting whichever center you're now in, but so long as you don't contact them you won't have to keep confirming the change. When you're about ready so sit and watch the plane again, simply open the ATC window again, contact whoever you're in, and they'll act as though you'd been keeping in touch all along!

good to know this trick, i will try cross-ocean over night, calculate the time, and give the machine this tedious job.......thanks

However, ATC can kick you off VATSIM if they feel like it. So if they are trying to contact you for 30min., and you are a threat to another aircraft or they are wanting you to do something and see you aren't doing anything and just letting your PC run all night, they could kick you off.

Indeed, but VATSIM flights are a bit different than those with the fairly blind ATC of the sim!

I tend to do what originalgrunge said, OR, cancel IFR once out in the ocean and fly "VFR on Top" (a real technique), before filing for IFR again once you get close to the other endof the pond.

Doing it this way feels more realistic - hell, you can even get your girlfriend to simulate saying "Speedbird 662 please contact Shanwick Oceanic on ....", then just cancel IFR and act as though you're on HF radio through SELCAL... 😉

what is the cross-ocean flight like in real world?
do they talk to ATC though satellite?
or cancel IFR and flight on their own?

For the North Atlantic, they fly "as normal" until they reach the Atlantic then they get clearance to follow a certain Track (from the NATS, North Atlantic Tracks System), that is dictated as Latitude/Longtitude co-ordinates as well as any radio stations that occur in the Atlantic (such as those in the Azores like FLO that are commonly used).

So waypoints are mainly things like N4530, N4020, FLO, N3015 .... etc

While they are crossing they speak to "Agencies" using HF Radio (High Frequency) but this is really noisy, so they don't sit listening to it constantly, they have a SELCAL system (selective callling) and the Oceanic Agencies will call the aircraft directly if they need to speak to them.

Along the route, the Aircraft also calls the Agency to give "POS REPs" or Position Reports. A specific altitude will have been given for the Track that has been assigned but the ATC Agencies still need regular reports to ensure lateral separation as well as vertical.

By Agency, we mean a unit on either end of the pond that has specialised ultra long range HF radio..... These Agencies communicate with the Aircraft then pass the requests, updates, POS REPs and any requests to the ARTCC Centres such as Gander or Shannon, who will make the actual ATC decision, and relay their answers, orders, etc back to the plane vai the handling agency.

If anyone is interested in Oceanic crossing, any of the following DVDs widely available on the net demonstrate it very well :-

Just Planes "BWIA" A430 DVD (London Heathrow - Barbados)
Just Planes "Sobelair" 767 DVD (Brussells - Varadero)
ITVV "Leisure" 767 DVD (London Gatwick - Orlando)

Only planes with one of the following Navigation systems are cleared for Oceanic crossing :-

- IRS (Inertial Reference System, Laser Gyro based positional system)
- INS (Inertial Nav System, mechanical Gyro based positional system)
- GNSS (GPS, Global Positioning System)

Hence, planes such as the earlier Boeing 727 models that did not have the INS fitted cannot cross Oceanic areas, or indeed some areas of desert, where there are no Ground Radio Stations to tune for VOR or NDB navigation.

😉

Wow, I didn't know that. 😳 Great lesson, thanks GPS-Kid. 😀

thanks GPS Kid,
do you know why this system has not been implemented in the MS flight simulation program?

Good question, I guess they just run out of resources....... hopefully it may be picked up in FS2006. 😉

FL050 wrote:

However, ATC can kick you off VATSIM if they feel like it. So if they are trying to contact you for 30min., and you are a threat to another aircraft or they are wanting you to do something and see you aren't doing anything and just letting your PC run all night, they could kick you off.

What does VATSIM mean?

mypilot wrote:

FL050 wrote:

However, ATC can kick you off VATSIM if they feel like it. So if they are trying to contact you for 30min., and you are a threat to another aircraft or they are wanting you to do something and see you aren't doing anything and just letting your PC run all night, they could kick you off.

What does VATSIM mean?

VATSIM. Virtual Air Traffic Flight Simulation Network

radarman, is vatsim a virtual system in FS2004?

No, It's a place to fly with other people and a "live ATC" manned by other flyers.

http://www.vatsim.net/

oh, you mean multiplayers' feature? sounds fun, never tried