Today I FINALLY got my flight simulator, audio system, and PE sorted. My situation is greatly complicated by the fact that I am running a homebuilt flight sim with real headsets connected to a real 4-place intercom, which hooks its built-in airframe connections into a homebrew amplifier circuit (corrects an impedance mismatch between the aviation headset mics and the mic input on a computer). This is all going into a secondary sound card so that I can preserve the engine/environment sounds through a home theater sound system. Amazingly, my audio setup with the two sound cards under Linux went pretty well. I fired up at Orange County, tuned to ground, hit the PTT button on my yoke (that was a whole other chore to get going, when I discovered that I had to re-wire the PTT button to an actual joystick input because there was no way in X-Plane to programmtically control the default PTT/ATC feature), and requested a radio check. The PE controller came back right away with a "loud and clear".
I must admit a smile crept across my face!
Only trouble was my transponder was not setting its frequency (a real Gables transponder head that interfaces to an Arduino). That was a programming bugaboo which I stayed up until just now fixing.
I have to admit I am SUPER rusty...I'm a real world pilot, but I've not done a lot of flying around anything bigger than a Class D airport. I sorta forgot about the whole clearance delivery thing.
Today was just a VFR hop out of Class C and over to KAVX...but soon, I will be dusting off those IFR procedures (my IFR currency expired in 2004....!) I must say, working with ATC is just about as intimidating as I remember it.
I am going to have to keep the knee-pad and pencil handy for sure.
Matt