[simpits-tech] Pneumatic controllers

[Matt Bailey]

On Saturday 26 February 2005 01:01, William Segal wrote:
> William Segal Wrote
>
> At 09:07 PM 2/25/2005, you wrote:
> >Matt
>
> This friend of mine has a crazy idea .He wants to set a FM  transmitter low
> power to broadcast
> to actual 155 radio's (the real thing) the proper information I might
> request from center or tower
> from over 1000 pre transcribed messages .... I know it sounds out there but
> this person says its relatively
> easy to do .There fore we receive actual communication using a normal
> aircraft radio ?
> If it seems far out it is that.He figures we can do it for about $2500  all
> up ..Who's to say where the tower
> or center is ?

	Doesn't seem worthwhile to me. You can have all the canned radio chatter you 
want already, using simple WAV files. You'd lose all interoperability with 
ATC services like VATSIM etc, including voice chat on multiplayer flights 
(unless you had a way to toggle between aviation radio and PC radio.......but 
then there's not much point in having the aviation radio). You could have 
private ATC sessions with a controller at the transmitter, but that's about 
it. The only increase in realism would be the noise of the real radio, and 
the coolness of being able to drop a real radio into the sim, with its 100% 
accurate operation etc.....definitely a plus, but is it worth the sacrifice?
	Incidentally, if you just want real radio chatter, you can buy a handheld 
scanner that reads aviation frequencies. When I lived close to an airport in 
AZ I used to do this to get ASOS (I would've listened to CTAF chatter as 
well, except there wasn't usually much activity at the airport.......). You 
can patch the scanner into your sim radio system. In fact, if you hack the 
scanner's tuning control (replacing the pot with an analog output from a 
Phidget is one possibility that springs to mind), you could even tune the 
scanner from your radios.
	If you want to use straight aviation radios with no modifications, you'll 
need to secure the proper licenses to operate on those frequencies. This will 
probably involve registering your station somehow so that it doesn't 
interfere with future aviation comm changes in the area. Frankly I doubt the 
government would let you do this. Modifying the transmitter part of the radio 
is illegal as far as I know, so trying to convert everything to CB or ham 
bands is out.
	I hate to be a downer, Bill, but I just don't think it's feasible. Nothing to 
stop you from inquiring with the authorities about it though. :)

	-Matt Bailey