CXA001 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 The VATSIM United States (VATUSA) division will be trialing real world Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) starting March 1st 2024 and lasting up to 6 months. More information available at: https://my.vatsim.net/learn/frequently-asked-questions/section/140 Is there any possibility of having the frequencies automatically display in the ATC bar in EFB? Regards, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Hi Marc From what I have read so far about these CTAFs there is not much chance to have them displayed on the ATC ribbon. The ATC ribbon displays frequencies from active controller's which data is downloaded at intervals of 30 seconds but CTAF seems more to be static data. I have also not yet read about a single source (e.g. a text file with a key-value list) which would provide all the frequencies per airport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dualznz Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 i too have looked into seeing if there is any airport api endpoints that shows CTAF and there is not, from what i have seen CTAF is generally only seen in un-monitored airports / fields and you have to look at the sectional charts for the frequencies stated (C) at each airfield. SkyVector, navigraph and so on displays the frequencies on the charts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob34 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 for what it's worth to the conversation, vpilot has added the .ctaf <airport> command from the chat window. Not as good as it would be in the ATC ribbon, but at least we don't have to go bumbling around for charts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CXA001 Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 21 minutes ago, bob34 said: for what it's worth to the conversation, vpilot has added the .ctaf <airport> command from the chat window. Not as good as it would be in the ATC ribbon, but at least we don't have to go bumbling around for charts. I saw that and if you right click on the frequency, you can tune your com1 radio to that frequency. Agreed, it is not as good as if it was in the ATC ribbon, but it is a good work around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Quote vpilot has added the .ctaf <airport> command Would be nice to know which source it is accessing to get the frequencies for a certain airport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CXA001 Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 26 minutes ago, aivlasoft said: Would be nice to know which source it is accessing to get the frequencies for a certain airport. I do not know what the actual back end source is. The only thing I could find was an end user look-up page: https://my.vatsim.net/pilots/aip I know, not very helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CXA001 Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 I asked the question on the VATSIM discord channel and here is the API: https://vatsim.dev/api/aip-api/get-airport Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Great! Thank you very much. I will have a look what can be done in EFB using this API. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 I ran some tests with the API by randomly selecting airports from the SkyVector maps where a CTAF frequency is displayed. I have no idea why, but most of these airports seem not to be accessible through the API. In most of all requests I get the message 'airport could not be found'. Only a few requests have returned useful data. Interestingly the successful requests were always at the big airports like KJFK, KSEA, KLAX etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CXA001 Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 My understanding is that this is a trial and that not all airport will have CTAF. What small airports did you try? The next time I am on VATSIM, I will try those airports using the .CTAF <ICAO> in vPilot and see if I get the same. Regards, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Here's a screenshot from the test program, I just checked a few airports: The output is formatted as JSON, so not really human readable ;-). You see, some airports provide information about their CTAF, some others not. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CXA001 Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 I ran the .CTAF command for the airports you listed above in vPIlot and received the same results. KCDC, KBCE & KHVE all returned No AIP data was returned which means there is no CTAF frequency for those airports on VATSIM. Everything else returned the same frequency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aivlasoft Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Thanks Marc for testing and reporting back. I have the impression that it is still too early to start implementation. Let's wait until the end of the trial and the possible findings. Who knows whether it will become a permanent service and whether the specifications might still change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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