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Tower!3D Pro: Airliner callsign numbers "group form"


dhleong

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Hello!

I owned Tower 2011 back in the day and recently picked up Tower!3d Pro on Steam. I suspect this has been asked before but I thought I'd go ahead and throw it out there: is there any chance of supporting the "group form" of numbers pronunciation for airliner callsigns? This is the FAA regulation where callsigns like "UAL2042" should be read as "UNITED TWENTY FOURTY TWO" instead of "TWO ZERO FOUR TWO," the latter of which is the only thing Tower seems to support.

Even though I know that group form isn't currently supported, it's a tough habit to break from ATCpro and Vatsim....

 

Thanks for your consideration!

Edited by dhleong
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That's disappointing, but I respect your decision. I would, however, like to respectfully disagree on the point that it "shouldn't be used based on the rules."

Looking at JO 7110.65W (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/ATC.pdf) 2-4-20 a. 2:

Quote

2. Air carrier and other civil aircraft having FAA authorized call signs. State the call sign followed by the flight number in group form.

NOTE—

“Group form” is the pronunciation of a series of numbers as the whole number, or pairs of numbers they represent rather than pronouncing each separate digit. The use of group form may, however, be negated by four-digit identifiers or the placement of zeros in the identifier.

EXAMPLE−

“American Fifty−Two.” “Delta One Hundred.” “Eastern Metro One Ten.” “General Motors Thirty Fifteen.” “United One Zero One.” “Delta Zero One Zero.” “TWA Ten Zero Four.”

NOTE− Air carrier and other civil aircraft having FAA authorized call signs may be pronounced using single digits if necessary for clarity.

EXAMPLE− “United Five One Seven.” “United Five Seven Zero.”

If you've found something that contradicts this, however, I would be happy to read it.

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To add my 2 cents to the grouping discussion:

Below is an extract from the Australian AIP Dated May 2017. Grouping is the preferred call sign method here as well

"4.16.1 Within Australian airspace, “group form” is the preferred means of transmitting callsign/flight number. Group form should also be used with military and other aircraft using a rootword callsign with numeric suffix. "

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I think the "group form" method should be considered as an enhancement for the next version of Tower!, and let the developers concentrate on new releases using new technologies. After all, do you think we would be playing Tower!3D today if the developers kept trying to add every suggested change to Tower!2011?

RickyJ

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13 minutes ago, futureboy said:

I think the "group form" method should be considered as an enhancement for the next version of Tower!, and let the developers concentrate on new releases using new technologies. After all, do you think we would be playing Tower!3D today if the developers kept trying to add every suggested change to Tower!2011?

RickyJ

I can agree with this.  I also this this would be a good reason to design the game in such a way that modders could add things like new airports to the game.  Then FT can focus on tweaking the core mechanics with occasional airports, and the community could provide additional airports as well that can tap into the core mechanics.

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19 hours ago, futureboy said:

I think the "group form" method should be considered as an enhancement for the next version of Tower!, and let the developers concentrate on new releases using new technologies. After all, do you think we would be playing Tower!3D today if the developers kept trying to add every suggested change to Tower!2011?

RickyJ

Very well said. If we would be keep adding every request we could not release the game. However... just like we did before the development of Tower!3D we will open a forum for such a requests. FYI more than 80% of the requests we received for Tower!3D  is in fact made to the game :)

 

Vic

 

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  • 5 months later...

I've been away from this sim for a while running another one.  After reading the release of the latest version, I thought this issue might have been addressed.  I was really disappointed to see it's gotten no attention from the crew.  

It must be a real undertaking for the developer to make this realistic, because this is the phraseology used by controllers everywhere in the US.  If you're a professional pilot or controller running this software, it's practically a show-stopper to use the voice recognition (which is pretty darn good!) and be forced to say it "wrong".  It can certainly be done, as other sims get it right all the time.

TJ

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I agree that group form is most common and I definitely prefer it. In fact, that was one one thing I liked about that other sim you mention. But, unfortunately, there were (and are) too many bugs for my liking and I gave it up in May 2016. I guess one could argue that with 2011 and 3D, FT has decided to use single digits for clarity - which is certainly allowable based on FAA rules despite some of the earlier discussion.

From JO 7110.65, 2-4-20 AIRCRAFT IDENTIFICATION

2. Air carrier and other civil aircraft having FAA authorized call signs. State the call sign followed by the flight number in group form.

NOTE− “Group form” is the pronunciation of a series of numbers as the whole number, or pairs of numbers they represent rather than pronouncing each separate digit. The use of group form may, however, be negated by four-digit identifiers or the placement of zeros in the identifier.

EXAMPLE−
“American Fifty−Two.”
“Delta One Hundred.”
“Eastern Metro One Ten.”
“General Motors Thirty Fifteen.”
“United One Zero One.”
“Delta Zero One Zero.”
“TWA Ten Zero Four.”

NOTE−
Air carrier and other civil aircraft having FAA authorized call signs may be pronounced using single digits if necessary for clarity.

EXAMPLE−
“United Five One Seven.”
“United Five Seven Zero.”

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