CTAF ON VATSIM

tgycgijoes

tgycgijoes

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I am a member of the CIX General Aviation Club in the UK and came across an interesting post there yesterday which I followed up on VATSIM. You are now to transmit on CTAF on the actual frequencies that are on the Sectionals and in the Chart Supplement Manual for any untowered airport just as in real life to announce intentions. No more common 122.80 UNICOMM texts. VATSIM also said that you can do this at controlled airports that are unmanned to announce your intentions when no VATSIM controller is on duty there. I didn't see what frequency but assume it would be the tower frequency. Anyone know if that is correct for unmanned controlled airports?
 
Yes.

For real-life full-time airports, CTAF when offline in Vatsim is the tower frequency - if it has only one tower frequency. Some large airports have multiple tower frequencies. For those, Vatsim assigns one of them as the CTAF frequency more or less arbitrarily, and the only way to know what it is is to look it up on a Vatsim-specific resource, like by searching at the Vatsim AIP, https://my.vatsim.net/pilots/aip.

August
 
Thank you for clarifying that. I thought it would be. This would be if no center was online to control that area I am assuming.
 
Yeah, I guess that if center is online but the airport is offline, center will act as the airport tower as in the past. This shift to CTAF is only for times that, previously, you would have been on Unicom.

August
 
Understood. I like the trend at VATSIM for more authenticity. I taught aviation a few years ago to high school age students in our Christian Day School Using FSX and real world comm training I was donated but back then it was all UNICOMM 122.80 and text on VATSIM which lost its authenticity. We used to transmit on the actual frequencies but not online for "real" training and the software was interactive too. Pilot Edge helped to train when they first got started too with their free seminars.
 
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