COM Radio Suggestion

[jc2da]

Why can't the COM radio lookup the airport frequencies when you dial in any ID?

I believe right now, it only does the lookup on the list of airports within 70 miles. However, what if you want to tune in the airport that is 80 miles away? It's frustrating when this happens. You first scroll and dont find it. Then you dial in the ID and dont find it. That's a lot of effort for nothing. It would be great if the COM could send the query back to the display that has a list of all the airports.

 

[CGameProgrammer]

When viewing the info page for any airport, you can push the display button that says "APT->COM" to program the radio. Then you push the physical TWR/GND/etc. buttons on the radio to dial in the corresponding frequency for that airport.

You can also manually tune a frequency on the radio and then push the APT button which will try to find the closest airports that use that frequency. Maybe this would just so happen to work in your particular case.

 

[jc2da]

Currently, my SL30 gets the APT->COM frequencies. I thought this way the display would do freq and ID lookups on the display for the SL30, since the SVCOM display has the freq and ID lookups on its own display.

I may switch it around so that what you say is possible. However, I think it would still be nice to just program the ID in the radio to do the lookup, right? No need to do extra pushes on the display.

The main reason for wanting this is because I frequently find myself wanting to listen to the airport frequency further than the 70 miles out that the SVCOM stores.

 

[dynonsupport]

There are already at least 5 ways to get an ID into the radio:

1) The NRST list on the radio. This goes to 75 miles out. Generally, this is about as far out as you can use a radio, so we feel it's a pretty reasonable distance. We can't put the whole database in the radio as the list is too big. We hadn't previously had feedback that 75 NM was limiting. What's your use case for looking up an airport that is generally out of radio reception range?

2) If you press APT on the radio twice, you can spin in any ID you want manually. This is limited to the same 75 NM.

3) Use the NRST list on SkyView. This goes 200 NM out. Scroll to the airport you want, and press APT->COM

4) Use the flight plan you have in SkyView. Press FPL, select any airport in your flight plan, and press APT->COM

5) Use INFO on SkyView to look up any airport by ID, name, etc. Then press APT->COM

 

[jc2da]

1) The NRST list on the radio. This goes to 75 miles out. Generally, this is about as far out as you can use a radio, so we feel it's a pretty reasonable distance. We can't put the whole database in the radio as the list is too big. We hadn't previously had feedback that 75 NM was limiting. What's your use case for looking up an airport that is generally out of radio reception range?

2) If you press APT on the radio twice, you can spin in any ID you want manually. This is limited to the same 75 NM.

3) Use the NRST list on SkyView. This goes 200 NM out. Scroll to the airport you want, and press APT->COM

4) Use the flight plan you have in SkyView. Press FPL, select any airport in your flight plan, and press APT->COM

5) Use INFO on SkyView to look up any airport by ID, name, etc. Then press APT->COM

Hmm, I can routinely hear CTAF calls from KHAF to KTRK which is 150 nm, the width of the state of CA, so not out of range. However, mainly, it is just to be prepared early and start listening for ATIS or to see how busy TWR is.

I usually do #1 (come up emtpy), then #2 (come up emtpy) often enough that I thought why not lookup the airport ID on step 2 and save a few steps. I dont know, maybe it's just me again.

I am going to switch my display COM to the SVCOM so that I can at least go to steps 3 4 or 5 now as well. However, I will lose the ability to push a freq to the SL30 now.