Creating an Airport Modification

This tutorial will guide you through the process of creating modifications allowing ATC and pilots to say the name of an airport. Click the images to view them in full size.

1. Before you begin

Start by going through the general tutorial for creating an ATC modification. It will show you how to create an airline callsign – one of the simplest form of ATC modifications to create with EditVoicepack. Once you are confident you know how to use EditVoicepack to create an airline callsign – and have verified it works in your flight simulator you can continue with this tutorial.

2. Get airport information

You need to make sure the data you enter into EditVoicepack match the data defined for the airport in your flight simulator. If the data doesn’t match completely, your modification will not be used.

This section shows how to use the free Airport Design Editor (ADE) to get the required information. Please see the ADE documentation for details on how to install and use this program.

  1. Start ADE and open the airport. This shows opening a stock airport (an airport already in flight simulator). Please refer to the ADE documentation for other options.
  2. Open the list of radio communication frequencies.
  3. Note down the ICAO code from the Airport code (“EKVH” in this example) and the Agent Name from the “Name” column (“Aars” in this example).
    EditVoicepack use the naming convention introduced by Microsoft in the ATC speech engine – which is inconsistent with naming used elsewhere in the simulator. So unfortunately you can’t rely on EditVoicepack and programs like ADE to use the same terminology.

3. Adding a new Modification

  1. Select the node “My Modifications/Airports/ICAO” in the tree view to the left.
  2. Click the “New Modification” toolbar button.

4. Entering basic information

In this step you need to enter the information you wrote down in step 2:

  1. Enter the ICAO code in the Identifier field of the modification.
  2. Enter the Agent Name in the Phrase field.
    If the agent names differs between for example Ground and Tower, you need to edit the airport scenery files to make the names identical. As an example see the airport EKYT in the second screenshot of step 2 – Approach and Tower is both named “AALBORG” while “Ground” would need to be changed.

5. Completing the modification.

Complete the modification with sound segments as outlined in the tutorial Creating an ATC Modification mentioned in step 1.

6. Agent names

In most cases you do not need to perform this step. You only need to do this if the Phrase you entered in step 4 does not match the Agent Name from step 2.

This tutorial has shown how to create an ICAO code. This is the modification your flight simulator use when announcing position (for example, it would now say “10 miles north of Aars” instead of “10 miles north of EKVH”) or when mentioning the airport name in for example an IFR clearance.

When communicating with ATC at the airport (for example Aars Tower) your flight simulator ATC speech engine will use “Agent Names”.

EditVoicepack will automatically create an “Agent Names” modification for you based on the Phrase used in the ICAO code. You do NOT need to create it yourself unless the value displayed in the Names section of ADE (see step 2) does not match the phrase you want to use for the airport name. As we carefully ensured our phrase “Aars” match the value from ADE, no further modifications are required. 

The specific airport from our example has changed name twice. From Vesthimmerland (where the VH in the EKVH code originates from), to Aars, and finally back to Vesthimmerland. If we wanted to update the flight simulator ATC speech with this new name without modifying the airport definition, you would have to enter the phrase “Vesthimmerland” for your ICAO code modification created above. This clearly no longer match “Aars” as it we found it in step 2, so we will need to create it manually.

  1. Select the My Modifications/Airports/Agent Names node in the tree view on the left.
  2. Click the “New Modification” toolbar button.
  3. Enter the following values in the new modification:
    1. Identifier: AARS
    2. Phrase: Vesthimmerland
  4. Complete the modification with sound segments as before.