"heavy" callsign

[cj241101]

As none of my AI aircraft are in the "heavy" category, I was wondering if anyone knows of a way of replacing "heavy" with something else e.g. "alpha" or "foxtrot"?  (Britannia Airways were using Alpha on the end of their UK outbound flight numbers and Bravo at the end of inbound flight numbers back in the 70's, long before the use of alpha-numeric callsigns became the norm).  I've looked at EVP but can't see any obvious way of achieving what I want.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Yeah, I don't know how you would do that either.

[Bjoern]

Is there a "heavy" voice sample in EVP?

[Bjoern]

Aircraft.cfg, "atc_heavy=" line.

So in EVP, you'd change the "heavy" voice sample to whatever you need and then simply declare any airliner to use the new sample as "heavy". This is, however, a global change and applies to all airliners designated as "heavy".

In case of the ATC system not accepting letters in flight plans, you'd have to create a new [fltsim.x] entry for a particular aircraft with a unique title and airline callsign in the "atc_airline=" line, e.g. "Britannia F". In EVP, you'd create new voice sample spelling out said airline name as "Britannia Fox(trot)". In the traffic file for the airline, you will need to assign each flight in the desired direction to the new repaint title. If everything comes together, you will at least end up with ATC calling the flight "Britannia Fox(trot) 123".

Can't walk anybody through it in detail as my MSFS installations are off the disk, but it should work with a bit of tinkering.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Use Phraseology, and for the Identifier choose HEAVY_YES. Check the Force Variation box.

For the Phrase use heavy.

Now choose what you want it to say. Copy to the other voices.

Hope this helps,

[cj241101]

Thanks for the replies - my apologies for being slow to respond - had a few other projects to complete. Anyway, having finally followed the advice offered I have managed to get my AI Britannia Airways 737 aircraft to use "Alpha" on the end of their flight numbers - most of the time. (Nothing I have flying at the moment is classified "heavy" so no problem with that). Not sure I entirely understand the "force variation" box, which I have ticked but still get "heavy" coming up some of the time regardless of what number is selected. The EVP help file doesn't make it clear how this is used.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Yeah, I don't know either.

[johnhinson]

The manual is clear:
The default behavior of EditVoicepack is to add the modifications as additional variations in case the identifier is already present in the default Flight Simulator voicepack. This means pilots and ATC will randomly choose between the default entry in Flight Simulator and your modification. To make sure your modification replaces the default Flight Simulator entry select “Force Variation” and indicate the variation to replace.

It has always worked that way for me.

Maybe worth checking there isn't another one buried in EVP also marked the same. Or save without it ticked and resave with, just in case that kicks it into action.

John

[Dennis the menace]

Forced Variation should not be a problem for "heavy", but even if the box for it is checked, it does not mean it will always work as I have found out.

Many times I have created a new voice file and checked the box for "Force Variation", only to hear the same awful sound for an ICAO or callsign.

I discovered that if that same phrase is in the list at the bottom of EditVoicePack because they have already included it, your new modification will not work. You will have to go through that list at the bottom and expand it, searching by continent or country and look for that same phrase. Once you find it, uncheck that box. It may be in several entries, so check them all. Unless you do that, it will only use the old sound file, and not your new one.

[cj241101]

Have been experimenting with the "heavy" callsign. I did 2 custom phrases; one "alpha" and another "bravo" and set the force variation to a random number. This worked but gave me 3 different suffixes to my Britannia 737 flight numbers i.e. I was getting Britannia 123 Alpha, Britannia 123 Bravo and Britannia 123 Heavy, all at random. Further experimentation reducing force variation to 0 (for both mods) seems to have eliminated the "heavy" and "Bravo" suffixes and I get the "Alpha" all the time. Ideally, I would like to have "Alpha" for flights outbound and "Bravo" for inbounds. Which isn't going to happen. But at least I'm halfway! Now I need to reassign my MoD trooping flights to aircraft with "heavy=0" in the aircraft.cfg as those flights didn't have the letter suffix.

Something else I've done is create a new callsign "Britannia0". Put a zero at the start of a flight number in AIFP and it deletes it, so I hear "Britannia 92 Alpha" rather then "Britannia 092 Alpha". The new callsign fixes this once all the flights starting "0" have "atc_airline=Britannia0" in the aircraft.cfg. Again more juggling of the aircraft allocations. All part of my ongoing London-Luton AI project, currently working on 1977.

Some screenshots:-

I am, of course, using a modern (UK2000 Extreme) version of Luton.  My limited skills have yet to advance to tackling major airport designs let alone numerous custom buildings.  Plus I cannot imagine how the FS9 ATC system would cope with an old version of Luton, which had only 1 way in and out of the main apron, and a taxiway that entered the runway at its midpoint - at least for westerly departures.  Gridlock I expect.