Lost communications KCMA-KHND

[punder]

EDIT: I just listened to the recording, and at some point the controller started calling me "Pilatus 12T" instead of "Legacy 12T." Maybe that was the source of my confusion. But I still don't know why I couldn't hear the ATIS on COM2.
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Yesterday I flew VFR w/ flight following from Camarillo to Henderson. As I was closing in on Henderson, I hadn't heard from the controller for awhile, and didn't have a clearance to enter the airspace, so I said "Legacy 5612T has the airport in sight." The controller then asked if I could here him okay. I said yes. He said he'd been trying to call me for several minutes with no answer.

Perhaps I spaced my callsign, but as all of you know, one's callsign is etched in the brain, like one's name, and you can usually distinguish it from all the other conversations and noise on the radio, even hours after the last time you heard it.

Here's what I think happened: I used COM2 to tune the Henderson ATIS, while leaving my COM1 on for the controller. I configured my audio panel to let me hear both COM1 and COM2, but only transmit on COM1. BUT I never heard the ATIS, even when obviously in range and line-of-sight. I finally turned off COM2 and called the controller, who had been trying to raise me for awhile.

So something is wrong with my RealAir Legacy audio panel/radio, or FSX, or the way one and/or the other works with PE.

Image of the panels attached. If you see some obvious mistake, let me know! Note, this was a mockup after the fact, so the only freq that corresponds to the real situation is 120.77 for the ATIS in COM2.

If anyone has a clue, I'd sure like to hear it. Thanks.

P.S. you have to use the scroll bar to see the entire image.

3 images stuck together: the audio panel, radio stack, and a photo of my Saitek radio.

panel-comp.jpg (115.13 KiB) Viewed 2064 times

[Mark Hargrove]

I recall a similar problem I had on a recent flight from VNY to SNA. I was monitoring some frequency on COM2 (don't remember what now) while talking to SoCal on COM1 -- or so I thought. When I made a call to SoCal I was notified that I was transmitting on the COM2 frequency. I had to turn off the "monitor" of COM2 before I could transmit on COM1. I think this is an FSX issue -- I think that perhaps FSX doesn't allow you to actually monitor/listen to both COM1 and COM2 at the same time, but instead is toggling COM1/COM2. One one of my Carenado aircraft, in fact (the Cessna Skymaster), selecting COM2 on the audio panel physically toggles COM1 off (and vice-versa), suggesting to me that perhaps they recognized the FSX limitation and providing a clue to what was actually happening by visually depicting it with the switch positions.

-M.

[Keith Smith]

PE supports only one concurrent com radio, not 2.

You can toggle between com1 or com2, but you can't use both at the same time.

If you ever want to know what freq the system thinks you are on, you can either use the online map, or you can check the status that is shown on the bottom right of the Windows client for FSX and FS9.