2. The Scope

The scope consists of three major parts, which can be viewed in the above picture:

• The Topbar, located at the top of the screen
• The actual Radarscope
• The Communication area located at the bottom of the screen

In this chapter we will focus on the Topbar and its functions, and the Radarscope and how to configure it. Information about the Communication area is found in Chapter 3.

2.1 The Topbar

All information not marked in the above picture doesn't have any actual function at this moment. It is just there for visual enhancement. Let us take a closer look at the functioning parts, starting with the button found under "Operating Modes" marked A.

2.1.1 TTS Enable/Disable button

This button toggles between the text displayed in the above picture "NORMAL" and the text "OFF". When indicating "NORMAL" the Text-To-Speech(TTS)-engine is activated which means that the pilots will use voice to communicate with you. When in "OFF"-mode the pilots will use text. Swap between the two by clicking the button.

2.1.2 Setupwindow and radarscope symbols

The button marked B in the Topbar-picture is displayed above. This button is used to bring up the Scope Setup Window shown below:

First look at the part called "Color Setup" marked A in the above picture. This part lets you configure which colors to use when drawing different objects on the scope. First select which object to change by clicking any of the buttons in the field marked A. Then set the wanted color in the field marked B. You set a color by either entering the values for the red (R), blue (B) and green (G) intensities in the textfields, or you can use the "+" and "-" buttons to change intensity of selected color (R,G or B). In the picture above we're about to change the color of the "TMA Boundary" object. The field between the "+" and "-" buttons are colored in the current selected color.

The area marked C called "Scope Setup" is where you select what objects to display on scope. In the picture above all objects have been selected. Select/deselect an object by clicking the appropriate button. In the picture below you can see what a VOR, NDB and FIX looks like at the scope with the IDs (codes) selected:

Exit the setup by either clicking "CLOSE" or anywhere on the radorscope.

2.1.3 Altitudefilter

In these textfields you may enter the altitudes where you want the aircrafts to be displayed on your scope. The number entered in the left field is the lower altitude from where aircrafts are displayed, that is if you enter "100" in the left textfield only aircrafts above FL100 (10000ft) will be drawn. The same formula is valid for the higher altitude value, the number entered times 100 gives the altitude from which the aircrafts is not displayed if above that altitude. To avoid confusion it is best left at the default setting "0" and "999".

2.1.4 Iconbuttons and time

The clock is selfexplanatory and from left to right the buttons are as follows:

• Exit simulator
• Show information about simulator
• Pause/Resume simulator
• Speed up simulator (x10 real time), use only when no traffic in sector

2.2 Flightstrip Window

To access the flightstrip window press F5 and it will appear on the screen. First of all there are three colors that can appear on the flightstrips as shown above. The first type of flightstrip you will encounter is the grey one. This is the color of a flightstrip not yet accepted by you from other controller. When clicking/selecting a flightstrip it will become yellow and the white color is indicated when the flightstrip/aircraft is accepted but not selected.

The info shown on a flightstrip is as follows:

• A: Aircraft callsign
• B: Aircrafttype
• C: Current speed
• D: Datacode, used when communicating wih other controllers
• E: Estimated time of sectorentry, could be delayed
• F: Indication if aircraft follows any standard procedure or expects vectors. Either SID, STAR or Vect
• G: Current clearance given, first cleared altitude or flightlevel and last cleared speed
• H: Entry-/exitpoint or current executed standard procedure
• I: Flightplan, departure airport - arrival airport

When doubleclicking a flightstrip another window will appear, namely the Flight Information Window where you find some more information regarding the selected flight. F.i. if we were to doubleclick the flightstrip for "KFB480" we would see a window looking something like this:

2.3 Aircraft symbol and datatag

First we will look at the ordinary aircraft symbol and its datatag, before looking at some special cases that appear during simualtion. Here is an example of the ordinary aircraft symbol:

As you can see in the picture above the actual aircraft is drawn as a triangle. This is the way the aircraft will be drawn as long as it is under your control. When not under your control the aircraft is drawn as a square, and also in a different color but we will get back to this when looking at the special cases. For now let us look at the datatag, which is the three lines of text to the right of the aircraft symbol in the above picture.

The first line, indicated by A, will always display the callsign.

Second line, indicated by B, contains information about aircraft altitude. The number to the left of "+" is current flightlevel/altitude and the number to the right of "+" is cleared flightlevel/altitude. Also the "+" can turn into "-" if aircraft is descending and "=" if the aircraft is maintaining a certain flightlevel/altitude.

As we will see soon the third line is the one that changes the most, but in the ordinary datatag it displays the following information:

• C: Aircraft datacode
• D: Aircraft groundspeed

Now let us look at some different possibilities for the datatag, starting with the datatags for a departing aircraft:

A shows the datatag before tower has handed it over to you which is done automatically when aircraft reaches a certain altitude. As you can see, the difference with the ordinary datatag is the color, which is green for aircrafts not controlled by you, and the fact that the aircraft symbol is a square instead of a triangle which also indicates that you don't have control of that aircraft. Also there is a "R" to the left on the third row. This indicates that a handover is in progress.

B1 and B2 alternates when you have initiated a handoff to areacontrol. As you can see the color is now darkred which is the color of someone awaiting confirmation of a handoff or handoff is accepted but not executed, in this case you awaiting areacontrol to accept handoff. The only difference here is that the speedindication is alternated with the ID of the controller to whom you sent your handoff request.

When areacontrol accepts handoff, as seen in image C, the color remains darkred but the third line will constantly display the "R" and to the right the ID of the accepting controller.

Finally when you've asked pilot to contact areacontrol, the datatag will turn into image D, indicating that you no longer have control of the aircraft (compare with image A). Instead of speed it displays the controller ID of the station now controlling aircraft.

Now let's take a quick look at the different datatags for an arriving aircraft to see the differences and equalities:

A1 and A2 are similiar to B1 and B2 in the departure datatags picture with the difference that now areacontrol is handing the aircraft off to you (H-ARR).

Image B indicates that you have initiated a handoff to tower controller.

In C the tower located at airport ESSA has accepted your handoff request, and in image D the tower at ESSA is now controlling the aircraft.

Last but not least we will look at a situtation you want to avoid if possible, namely the collision alert:

To avoid collision alerts make sure you keep at least 4nm or 1000ft separation between aircrafts.

2.4 Distance measuring tool

The distance measuring tool is accesed by pressing and holding down left mouse button while draging cursor to wanted position. As seen in the above picture we wanted to know the distance to BALVI from SAS555. At the first row we can read the distance which is 7nm in the picture. The second row is the heading to that point from startpoint selected, in this case it is heading 296. Because we placed the starting point at an aircraft we also got information in the third row (default is "---"). The third row is the time to arrival at selected point measured in minutes. In the picture we can see that SAS555 would need 1 minute to get to BALVI if it was heading there.

2.5 Working the scope

There are some more things worth mentioning that hasn´t been covered in previous sections regarding the scope. First, you can move the centerposition of the scope by doubleclicking the wanted centerposition. You can also zoom in and out by pressing F11 (zoom in) and F12 (zoom out). By combining Shift+F11/F12 you make a larger zoom each step. That should cover the basics around the scope, now let´s take a look at how to communicate with pilots and other ATC stations.