Interface

Airwave has four major parts of the interface:

1. Radar
2. Frequency Panel
3. Stripboard
4. Chatbox
5. Flight Panel

Radar

To view aircraft in the air and on the ground, you will utilize the radar. The radar is the paramount for situational awareness, if not already obvious. Most of your time will be spent looking at the radar and issuing commands to aircraft based on their state and position on it.

Controls

You can click and drag to move the view around, and use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

When you zoom in far enough into an airport, the radar type will switch from air to ground, allowing you to view taxiways, terminals, and gates. You can also use PageUp and PageDown to switch between air and ground views respectively.

Blips

Air blips include an aircraft's callsign, currant and target altitude, and the current speed.

Aircraft arriving at your airport will be displayed green, aircraft leaving your airport displayed blue, and if you've selected an aircraft, it will be displayed yellow. If an aircraft is not on your frequency, it will be displayed as a simple grey dot, without any further information (unless selected). Finally, if two or more aircraft encounter a TCAS RA (collision avoidance resolution), the involved aircraft will be colored red.

This color pattern of green, blue, yellow, and red carries throughout the other tools in Airwave such as the stripboard and partially in the chatbox.

The line extending from the dot of a blip points in the direction of travel and is extended per one minute of travel. You can use this line to predict where an aircraft will be in a minute, or further out into the future using the line as a scale.

Ground blips are shown as white for contrast and visibility in the ground mode of the radar. They only include the callsign of the aircraft. The size of the line from the center of the blip is arbitrary in the ground view and only shows the direction of travel.

Airspace

In the airspace view, you will see the runways of your airport plus blue and grey lines extending from them. The blue lines indicate the localizer beams of the ILS, where the aircraft will need to line up with in order to land on the runway. The grey lines around an ILS line show the range of the localizer, where aircraft will be able to detect and intercept it.

The blue circle on a blue ILS line indicates the point at which an approach has to be 4,000 ft or below. If an aircraft at 4,000 ft is vectored to the area of the line between the blue circle and the runway, it might initiate a go-around for being too high.

Frequency Panel

This panel is second to the radar. Here you will manage the frequencies you occupy. It can hold up to 10 total slots, which you can switch between using the number row of your keyboard. To the right of every frequency box is a dropdown selector to choose a named frequency set up by the server config.

Stripboard

The stripboard is the core part of your workflow. It allows you to organize aircraft into discreet steps, see aircraft that need attention in the inbox, and reference when giving commands. You can click & drag headers and strips as you please. You can also rename, add, and remove headers to customize the stripboard to your workflow.

The only hard-coded header is the Inbox as it is required for providing you with incoming strips that you are given control over.

The stripboard includes an options section (toggleable via the Opts button) that tells it which kind of aircraft you are looking to control. For example, if you check the "Approach" box, Airwave will create strips for all aircraft on approach, keeping your stripboard up to date with approach operations.

By default, the stripboard includes all major segments of flight: approach, departure, landing, takeoff, parked, and ground. This is to allow any player to jump in and customize as they'd like while ensuring all aircraft within their control are added to the stripboard. However, these defaults can easily be changed and will be saved to the client storage between sessions.

The Clr button will remove any aircraft that is in a state of flight that is not checked by options. This allows players to quickly discard strips that they no longer have control over, or clear the stripboard between game sessions. Headers and aircraft that are still under your control will not be removed and will stay the way you might have them sorted.

Chatbox

The chatbox displays a log of all of your messages between aircraft and allows you to toggle between your current frequency and all frequencies. The chatbox includes an input box to send text commands instead of using your voice.

ATC messages are shown in red and aircraft messages are shown in green (blue is not used here). You can click a callsign in the log to select the aircraft that sent the message and the callsign will be displayed as yellow (because of selection).

Flight Panel

In the flight panel, you can decide whether to divert approaches, delay departures, or keep both running normally. By default, under normal operations, aircraft will come from arrival into your approach airspace, where you will need to sequence them in for approach. Aircraft parked in a gate, will be scheduled to depart randomly by the server. It will give you a ~1-5 minute window to see the departure and plan for sequencing.

When approaches are diverted, right when an aircraft is about to enter your airspace, it will be diverted to another airport.

When departures are delayed, departures will not be scheduled.

Both above options do not affect existing approaches or departures. Both approaches and departures can be turned on and off as needed to suit workflow and throughput. The difficulty is in your hands.