CRJ550 Not Identified by ATC

For some reason, the Aerosoft CRJ550 is not recognized by ATC in at least one situation.

Here’s an example scenario with the Baron 58, which works fine: I’m on the runway and a plane behind me asks for takeoff clearance. Since I’m on the runway, the response to the plane is “Hold short runway 25R. Traffic is Beechcraft Baron 58 on the runway.” That’s great.

But when I fly the CRJ550, the response is “Hold short runway 25R. Traffic is on the runway.” Clearly the system can’t identify my plane. I’ve looked all over for a solution for this and have tried to alter the locPak file numerous times (after backing it up of course) but nothing is working. Can you tell me where to even start looking to solve this?

Thanks.

The problem may be with the aircraft, itself. I don’t own the CRJ550, so I’ll use the default Cessna Caravan as an example

Take a look at the file:
asobo-aircraft-208b-grand-caravan-ex\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_208B_GRAND_CARAVAN_EX\aircraft.cfg

The aircraft is identified by ATC using these two lines:

atc_type = "TT:ATCCOM.ATC_NAME CESSNA.0.text"
atc_model = "TT:ATCCOM.AC_MODEL C208.0.text"

If you see “TT:”, that means, it’s referencing something in the locPak file. If you don’t have a “TT:”, then the system will take whatever hard-coded value they’re giving it.

If you’re using the sim in English, looking at the en-US.locPak file, the system will identify it as:

"ATCCOM.ATC_NAME CESSNA.0.text": "Cessna",
and
"ATCCOM.AC_MODEL C208.0.text": "Caravan",

If you own this aircraft through the Marketplace, it is possible that the aircraft.cfg file might not be there, as it would be encrypted. In that case, your only recourse is to open a ticket with Aerosoft, which you may want to do anyway, even if you do have access to the file, so they can make the change permanent. (Keep in mind that if you edit your aircraft.cfg file, any subsequent product updates may overwrite that file.)

Unfortunately, Flight Simulator doesn’t have a CRJ550 in their .locPak file. Only a CRJ700:

  "ATCCOM.AC_MODEL CRJ700.0.text": "CRJ700",
  "ATCCOM.AC_MODEL CRJ700.0.tts": "CRJ700",

So the most that Aerosoft could do would be to hard-code it on their side. Even if the did have a CRJ550 entry, I would have called it “CRJ”. "To say “CRJ 700” is too many syllables for fast-talking ATC.

You may want to open a Zendesk ticket with the Flight Simulator team asking for the addition of CRJ550 lines. However, I will caution that I have opened up somewhere around 400 Zendesk tickets and the team has fixed, I dunno, maybe ten of the bugs I’ve ever reported.

Hope this helps.

First of all, thank you for responding.

I know about how the sim gets its ATC designation from the aircraft.cfg file, but the CRJ550 doesn’t have one. I read online that since I purchased the product in the Marketplace that the file was either encrypted or it didn’t exist at all, so that explains it.

I have tried NUMEROUS things to try to get this to work. I even created my own mod that called my own version of the aircraft.cfg file, but when I activated it, the CRJ didn’t show up in MSFS. Of course I have to assume it’s been coded to not allow that to happen.

I’ve changed the locPak file to include the CRJ, but that didn’t work. I know that process works with other planes, because I’ve been able to get ATC to recognize them by altering that file in the same way. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve made about 100 changes to that file over time and I keep them all in a Python script. After every sim update, I run the script and it updates the file accordingly.

I must admit that after going to the Aerosoft website and reading their forums, I don’t believe that they would entertain changes to benefit this situation since nothing is technically “broken”. They’ve had a supposed update to the plane pending for a long time, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for it. Since I update my own locPak file I don’t need to get Zendesk involved, and as you noted, I wouldn’t expect anything to be done anyway, and it apparently wouldn’t resolve the situation anyway.

Unfortunately, I’ve moved on and decided not to fly this plane because of other issues, but I’ll give it another try if the update ever comes through.

Again, thanks for your response.

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I didn’t see this earlier, so sorry for the late response. Technically, the -550 is a -700, just with a different cabin. The “550” designator is union/marketing thing. The icao type designator remains CRJ7.

You can check this here: List of aircraft type designators - Wikipedia

There is a separate icao_type_designator entry in aircraft.cfg. I’m not an aircraft dev, so I don’t know what that does (help with model matching on traffic, maybe?). For the ATC stuff, they can either standardize on the CRJ 700 or branch off on their own. Some of the existing .locPak entries match their ICAO counterparts, and others are just names.

I found a thread on Aerosoft’s forums.

If I’m understanding it correctly, it sounds like these are the values in the aircraft.cfg file:

atc_type = BOMBARDIER
atc_model = CRJ550

They don’t have quotation marks around them. I’m wondering if the parser, expecting a string value, parses BOMBARDIER and CRJ550 without quotes as nulls.

I’m wondering if they needed to be this:

atc_type = "BOMBARDIER"
atc_model = "CRJ550"

to show up in ATC.

Of course, ideally, it would be this:

atc_type = "TT:ATCCOM.ATC_NAME BOMBARDIER.0.text"
atc_model = "TT:ATCCOM.AC_MODEL CRJ550.0.text"

but the second doesn’t exist. I’m wondering if it would pay to contribute to this thread or create a new thread asking for something like the one right above, and having them petition Microsoft to add the 550 entry to their .locPak files. Even if Microsoft doesn’t follow through, your Python script could at least add in the CRJ550 entry.

I just noticed that my post didsn’t show my real name. I’m Hans Hartmann, who made the CRJ. See my post above.

Hans

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Oh wow, thank you for replying, Hans!

Is there anything that could be done so that the 550’s name shows up in ATC calls? (Again, I don’t own this aircraft, so I cannot experimentally test that it doesn’t, but I have to assume that the OP is correct that it is blank in the ATC window.)

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