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How many COM radios in Airliners?

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How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby benih » Sun May 23, 2021 1:19 am

Hi there,
I wonder how many individual COM radios modern airliners have? Whats the max number out there?
Do fighter jets usually have more or less com radios?

(The background of my question is that i want to get a sane max number of default radios handled by the fgcom-mumble protocol, which should cover 95% of cases)
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby Johan G » Sun May 23, 2021 6:09 am

I asked around on the Operation Red Flag (OPRF) Discord server. It would seem like for military aircraft at least 6 radios would be needed.

It appears that several types of aircraft have a surprising amount of radios. The Fairchild Republic A-10A Thunderbolt II for example have 5 radios (2 VHF radios in the 20-76 MHz band, 2 VHF radios for the 116-151 MHz band, and one UHF radio in the 225-400 MHz band), many army helicopters have 6 radios ("2 uhf, 2 vhf, satellite and not sure what the last is"), so has the Lockheed SR-71 (2 UHF, 2 VHF, 2 HF). Many tankers and transports have at least 4.
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby benih » Sun May 23, 2021 10:57 am

Thank you very much for this information!

Fgcom-mumble could handle this, however i think flightgear is restricted to vhf currently?
So putting 5 vhf radios into the protocol should be enough currently?
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby Johan G » Sun May 23, 2021 1:01 pm

benih wrote in Sun May 23, 2021 10:57 am:Thank you very much for this information!

You are most welcome! :)

benih wrote in Sun May 23, 2021 10:57 am:Fgcom-mumble could handle this, however i think flightgear is restricted to vhf currently?

There is no such a restriction in core, only the restriction of what the various radio models, their animations, and Nasal code will let you enter. I have entered the 910 MHz echo test frequency in the Viggen before the developer added Nasal logic that limited input to documented radio bands. I am quite sure I have also used UHF frequencies in the OPRF Saab 37 Viggen.

Edit 1: The B-52H have 7 (seven) radios!

Edit 2: I was incorrect about restrictions in core, but that do not stop FGCom-mumble from using frequencies outside the VHF airband. See Colin's post below.
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby colin_geniet » Sun May 23, 2021 1:29 pm

Johan G wrote in Sun May 23, 2021 1:01 pm:There is no such a restriction in core, only the restriction of what the various radio models, their animations, and Nasal code will let you enter.

To be precise, FG C++ radios implementation is restricted to the standard VHF airband, but it doesn't enforce this limitation on the input property (frequencies/selected-mhz).
So one can set the frequency to something else (e.g. UHF). The C++ instrument will clamp/ignore the value for internal use, but that doesn't stop FGCom-mumble from using it.
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby Johan G » Sun May 23, 2021 1:32 pm

colin_geniet wrote in Sun May 23, 2021 1:29 pm:To be precise, FG C++ radios implementation is restricted to the standard VHF airband, but it doesn't enforce this limitation on the input property (frequencies/selected-mhz) [...] [so] that doesn't stop FGCom-mumble from using it.

Ah. Thanks for the explanation.
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby colin_geniet » Sun May 23, 2021 1:48 pm

Going back to the original question about airliners: from my copy of the A320 FCOM, base equipment is just 2 VHF radios, but it can go up to 3 VHF and 2 HF.
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Re: How many COM radios in Airliners?

Postby Isaak » Sun May 23, 2021 8:55 pm

FG's 777 had 3 VHF and 2 HF comm radios installed.
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