handoff errors at KMCI

 Yes, there is an internal server error on the previous posts so let's continue here. I hope that wheniwasinspace can post his replies as well as they were useful. 

My take on KMCI is that indeed the airspace is visible East, West, North, South directly on the screen but then you have to factor in altitudes. There is a useful map that is available. I will try to find it. I believe that maybe "wheniwasinspace" once published this map as a topic. It is helpful to have this map in front of you if you direct planes onto different altitudes. Let me look for the map.

Here is what I do more now with continues success.

When times are not busy (early morning, late at night, the weekend at times):

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I control all areas all at once meaning East and West approach, east and west final, east departures, west departure and sometimes even in combination with N, S and W satellites.

The beauty of it: no more hand-off issues, penalties and the instructor yelling at you. You should at least try to play this for a while in low traffic times. It is relaxing and pleasant. 

When you have > 10-15 planes you probably will not be able to handle it any longer as too many things will happen all at once. But it is worth a try.

With busier traffic:

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I make  a choice between arrival and departing aircrafts.

When I control departing planes. I select East and West departure and I make sure I stay away from A, B, F and P areas. I control planes away from F and P when they are at low altitude. I direct them higher when they are only in my E or W airspace and when I exit them I make sure that I stay either under the A and B sector or fly over it. Here is when the map can be helpful or you can read from the screen. It is important to follow the maps of the correct flow. If planes are North flow, select the North maps on your screen. The selection is done in the Display Control Bar (DCB) on top of the screen. 

When I control arriving aircrafts, I always manage A and B (arrivals) and F and P (finals) together. There are simply to many issues if you keep A/B separate from F and P. But you can alway try.

Here again, altitude is the most important thing. You get dinged if you are not between 110-150 at first , the closer to the airport you need to between 70-120 and even further between 50-120. That is all assuming North flow and A sector on the West. Another flow (south, east flow) or the B sector will change the altitude picture. So again the map is key. 

KMCI is a great area to exercise. There is just so many combinations and opportunities that you have to tailor make the area per your own choosing. Then exercise a lot without getting frustrated by the inspector.

I hope this helps. I will now try to find the map gain.

Happy controlling  

The airspace violations is most likely because you are invading A,B,S,N,J,P,F airspace which is inside yours. You need to treat SFC-150 with more than one grain of salt. You own SFC-150 only if none of the other sectors overlap. You need to coordinate with those controllers or keep out of their airspace.

As for flights nearby I'm guessing you are talking about busting beacause of CA. You are never allowed to have planes closer to each other than 3NM horizontally or 1000ft vertically.

When planes leaves satelite airports with a traffic pattern it is very common that the plane is not separated from the other planes in the pattern yet.

The phrase "Radar contact" is you signing a contract that you will care for the planes safty  from obstacles and other aircraft. If the plane is below the MVA or to close to aircraft in the pattern, then you immidiatley fail your job.

So for planes requesting an IFR clearence, assign them an altitude above the MVA, below aircraft arriving/departing your main airport. Then wait until the plane is separated from the ground and other aircraft before saying "radar contact".

I have this in some of the Tracons... Atlanta rarely lasts more than 2 hours before crashing, while ABQ never ever crashes.

I've spent alot of time trying to figure out exactly what happens and if there is a way to avoid it. So far I haven't been able to to avoid it completly.

It does seem like in Atlanta if I have received a point out and the aircraft leaves the border of the entire sim chances of a crash increase.

So I try to exit out of my point outs once I don't need them anymore..

But that doesn't fix all crashes. 

I've also dug around in windows logging feature and noticed that one of the crashes occur in one of the Microsoft Foundation Classes DLLs.

This crash seems to happen in many apps from the same era and is most likely a windows bug that ATCpro would need to catch and handle, but that's not going to happen so unless anyone is hackish enough to reverse engineer MFC and apply a fix and give us a working DLL this is going to continue to be an issue.

One bug, and I don't remember if this is connected to the MFC one or not seems to have to do with the voices of the AI pilots. A WAV-file is created and then played when they talk.

It seems that if the creation of the WAV file takes longer than expected, the game will try to play the file before it exists.. And it crashes the game out to the desktop.

Think the only solution here is to just hope the computer is fast enough. Don't run to much other software and hope for the best :D

I believe these issues where known but since it is unlikely we will ever see a new version of this software it is what it is.