Q: What is the UNICOM frequency? What is it used for?1 R: 122.80. Used for communications in uncontrolled areas. Remark : At the very beginning of your connection, before choosing an ATC, RW is set on 122.800 which is called the UNICOM frequency. It has to be used when you are flying in an area where no ATC is available. UNICOM is an autoinformation frequency on which you can say your intentions and hear others'. It could be useful when several aircraft are on approach to an uncontrolled airfield. Q: What do the numbers near the triangles mean in the EHSI/TCAS panel?2 R: Those numbers idenity altitude difference in hundreds of feet of different aircraft in the area. he SquawkBox TCAS system, part of the EHSI in SB 2.1.1, shows aircraft in the vicinity of your aircraft and aids in collision avoidance. Normally, targets are shown in white and have an associated numeric value which indicates the relative altitude difference from your current altitude. This value is indicated in hundreds of feet and is positive for aircraft higher than your position and negative for aircraft which are at a lower altitude. Targets will appear yellow if within about 7 nm horizontal and within 1300 feet vertical. Targets will appear red if within 3 nm horizontal and less than 900 feet vertical. To bring up the TCAS screen, display the FMS and click the TCAS button. If no aircraft are within 40 nm, you will either see a blank TCAS display or a Message stating that no aircraft have been detected. Q: Eaxplain briefly what the TCAS is.3 R: The Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System It helps to prevent mid-air collisions with aircraft in the air. Q: You are at the gate performing your pre-start procedures. Why should you be in squawk standby, and how do you activate this mode? 4 R: You should squawk standby because you are on the ground. Also because if other people is at the same airport, the radar screen will be full of people squawking at the airport and ground control won't be able to see you clearly enough. Q: Can you use any server of your choice for Teamspeak (e.g. your own TS server) ? On what setting do you have to set the mike to transmit ? 5 R: No you cannot use your own server for Teamspeak. You have to connect to a voice server for Teamspeak. On the SB preferences screen. Q: Do you have to fill a flightplan when flying IFR ? VFR ?6 R: Yes you have to file a flightplan for IFR and VFR. Q: Decrypt the following METAR (note : EBOS = Ostend) EBOS 081055 07010G30KT 70V90 4500 OVC030 -RA 18/12 Q1012 TEMPO BR 7 R: This is a report for Oostende Airport, Belgium. This report was made on the 8th at 1055 UTC. Winds from heading 070 (East) at 10 knots, gusting to 30 knots. Winds variable from heading 070 to 090. Visibility is 4500 meters. Overcast Clouds at 3000 Feet. Light Rain. Temperature is 18oC Dew Point is 12oC Mercury is 1012 HectoPAscals Temporarily Mist in the area. Q: Where can you find a list of active servers ?8 R: From going to http://www.ivao.org/network/ Clicking on Servers, then Network. http://www.ivao.org/ts/index1.asp Q: What is an alternate airfield (indicated when filing a flightplan)?9 R: Alternate Airfield is another airport you will fly into, in case of a emergency. Alternate airport : This the airfield you plan to divert in case you can't land on your initial destination airfield (because of weather conditions for instance). Q: What is the buffer meter for ?10 R: The meter immediately to the right of the FMS button indicates the buffer size. When not connected, the meter will appear full scale. After connecting, the meter should drop to almost zero (depending on the message traffic). The meter runs from approximately 0 bytes to 2000 bytes. This is an indirect indicator of messaging activity, as it shows how many messages are awaiting for processing. The actual receive buffer is 32K, which means that the buffer may be above 2000 bytes, but you are not necessarily in danger of losing data. Normally the meter should indicate less than half scale. If the buffer meter fills up and doesn't come down, SB is having a hard time processing the messages fast enough. It is important to make sure that you minimize the number of programs running when you use Flight Sim and SB. If, for some reason, the buffer fills up completely, you will get a warning indicating data is being lost due to a full buffer. If this occurs frequently while online, you should check both your local connection and the connection to the server to make sure that neither of them are the cause of the problem. More on this is covered in the Tech Support section. Q: You must divert to an uncontrolled airfield. How do you find the weather for the airport? 11 R: By typing .metar xxxx (xxxx = ICAO code of airport) Q: Using 'EDDM 181950Z 23018KT 9999 FEW040 SCT090 BKN120 OVC200 5/2 Q998 NOSIG, describe the weather conditions. 12 R: This is a report for Munich / Riem, Germany. This report was made on the 18th at 1950 Zulu. Winds from heading 230 (South East) at 18 knots. Visibility 10 km+ Few clouds at 4000 feet. Scattered Clouds at 9000 feet. Broken Clouds at 12,000 ft Overcast Clouds at 20,000 ft. Temperature is 5oC Dew Point is 2oC Mercury is 998 HectoPAscals. No Significant changes in the area. Q: How do you silence a TCAS alert ?13 R: By moving out the way of the nearby traffic. Q: Where should your aircraft be located before connecting SquawkBox to IVAO's network (IVAN)?14 R: Should be parked at a terminal or a gate. Q: You wish to file your flight-plan. How is this done?15 R: From the Squawkbox menu, Choose send flight plan. Then manually fill in all the information on the page and then click send plan. From the flights menu in Squawkbox, ATC Functions, File Flight plan. Manually fill in all the information you need according to IFR or VFR flight plan. Q: Expose briefly what you have to do if you want to start FS and use the multiplayer feature of SB16 R: You need to download and install SB from http://www.avsim.com/mike/sb_pc/sb/downloads.htm Q: What do you do if you are requested to resend your flightplan ?17 R: From the Squawkbox menu choose resend flightplan. Q: Can you send a private message to a pilot or a controller ? If yes, how is this done ?18 R: By typing .msg xxxx_xxx for ATC and .msg xxxxxxxx (x = callsign) for a pilot... or same for anyone you see online. Q: You are disconnected from the network. What is the quickest way to reconnect? 19 R: By going to the Squawkbox menu and choosing connect, then click the connect button, then from the SB menu to choose resend flightplan. The quickest way to reconnect after an intempestive disconnection is to redo the full connection procedure. Servers may then indicate your present callsign is active and refuse the reconnection. In such a case, use a slightly modified version of your callsign (AF6624Ê instead of AFR6624 for instance). Remember not to use more than 7 characters. Or keep the Reconnect on Disconnect setting on. Q: When filing a flightplan, what is the /F suffix for ?20 R: /F means FMS equipped. TCAS, Drop down list, Suffix : We file the aircraft type from the drop down listing of SB 2.3.4 (Older SB versions do not include this). You can quote the TCAS box (Tee-CAS - Traffic Alerting And Collision Avoidance System) to indicate you will use it, since most commercial airliners are TCAS equipped nowadays. This will add a T/ as a prefix into the aircraft type box below. Other prefixes are : H/ - heavy aircraft (weight > 136t). Heavy is mentioned in the callsign (here it would be "F-CYMLR heavy". B/ - both heavy and TCAS equipped. Also available are some suffixes like : /F = aircraft equipped with FMS or FMC (Flight Management System or Computer). The most common suffix used in FS world, to be used with most commercial airplanes (in addition, even with panels without any FMS, SB includes one that can be used anyway). /G = Global Positioning System (GPS)/Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS) oceanic, enroute and terminal navigation and those that have GPS approach capabilities. To be indicated if using a GPS during your flight. /U = transponder with altitude encoding. To be indicated when using a panel without DME function. Some others can be found also. See SB Manual for details.