VoxATC and VATSIM

I'm still looking for radio stacks. I found a bit of a bargain on GoFlight modules but funds are low at the moment so I think I'll leave it for now.

I will splash out on VoxATC UK though. I tried the demo a while back and apart from the robotic voices I really liked it. Having to actually speak to ATC really adds to the flight experience, and I believe there are better voices available.

I've been holding off buying it until I could check out VATSIM, an online multiplayer environment with real people doing the ATC. Although, obviously,  it's far better than any computer generated ATC, the drawback is that with only 30 or 40 controllers on at any one time you are severely limited in where you can fly and receive a service. It's also very geared up for airliners, although I understand there are a fair number of people doing VFR flights in there as well.

With this in mind I plan to use VoxATC for offline flying, and VATSIM for online.

Until I get a radio stack I can use Multi Crew Experience (MCP) to handle the radios by voice command, to save the pain of using the mouse.

On the subject of VATSIM, a strange thing occurred when starting FSX this evening (I'm getting used to strange things happening to FSX). I installed FSInn a couple of weeks ago so I could take a look at VATSIM (FSInn is one of the clients you can use to connect to the VATSIM environment). It worked fine for a few days and I haven't used it since.

Today, for no discernible reason, FSX kept crashing, citing FSCopilot as the reason. After a quick trawl of the web I uninstalled FSInn and FSCopilot and all was well again. I will have to reinstall FSInn at some point if I'm going to use VATSIM as the other client you can use, SquawkBox, didn't work at all for me. I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.