Tags and Symbols
This page will give an overview of the different radar returns, symbols, tags, colours and miscellaneous bits of text you may encounter when operating an vSMR AMS RDD scope.
The yellow amorphous blobs are primary ground radar returns. Much like real life, they don't much look like a plane because the wings don't reflect horizontal radar very well. The size and shape of the blob largely correlates to vertical stabiliser height, and fuselarge length. If you hover over them, a selector symbol appears, allowing you to select that radar target and associated flight plan with a click. Note TopSky-compatibility for those using TopSky.
Blue versions of these symbols are drawn behind aircraft, showing where they were and giving you a rough indication of speed.
When the radar system is able to recognise a RPS (radar blob) as a plane, it will draw a symbol around it. Squares are used for primary-only targets, circles are used for targets that have their transponder set to at least mode C. Primary returns are only recognised from background returns when the target is moving with some speed and will be lost shortly after they stop. The back-up tags will show up under roughly the same conditions as primary target acquisition, but more on that later.
Either of these can be manually acquired or released by using the Target menu in the top bar, respectively showing or hiding the associated tag regardless of correlation and transponder state.
vSMR always shows a track line for correlated radar returns. This line shows how far the target will move in a specific number of seconds. The default is 15 seconds and fairly close to IRL, but you may wish to change this via the menu, under Target, Predicted Track Line. The inset window(s) use their separate value, which defaults to 30s. You find this under Target, Inset Speed Vector.
There you will also find an option "Always". With this toggled on, the line will always be drawn even for stationary targets, so you can get an idea of where they are pointing. This is not a realistic option, but may be useful when determining orientation. You can also trigger this temporarily by using Alt mode
Traffic on ELLX with the Always option enabled. Note the small lines from aircraft on stand like ANZ361,
and the bigger lines from moving aircraft.
Back-up TAGs only show up when belux easy mode is enabled, and provide a way to reference callsigns for uncorrelated callsigns
Full correlated tags are highly configurable, for a full explanation of all the fields I must refer to local setups and plugin manuals. However, here are some features that appear across all of them.
The tag backgrounds correspond to assigned SIDs, except for airborne tags whose background is black. The background is slighly brighter for the currently selected tag.
Tags can have three colours of border: yellow, orange or red. A yellow border is drawn around the selected (ASEL) target or flightplan tag. A red border is drawn when an error condition exists, currently this is only when the current squawk mismatches the assigned squawk. If a tag with red border is selected, the border turns orange.
Airborne tags do not get borders, they get yellow text when selected and lack any error indications.
| Status | Example |
|---|---|
| ASEL |  |
| Error |  |
| ASEL + Error |  |
| Airborne + ASEL |  |
Whenever an error border appears, an extra line will appear on the top of the tag, indicating what the error is in textual form.
In the case of a squawk mismatch, this will be SSR/FPL as in the Error example above.
If desired, these error lines can be disabled using the "Tag Error Lines" toggle under "Display" in the top menu bar. This setting is stored per ASR.
One of three clearance indicators can be appended to the callsign: line-up, takeoff or landing. Line-up clearance is not implemented at this time, as there is no standard method of communicating this clearance.
A takeoff clearance flag looks like an upwards arrow and is set whenever the ground status is set to DEPA.
The landing clearance consists of a downwards arrow and is set whenever either the TopSky "Mark" or "Freq" is enabled, or when a K or R is found in flight strip field 7.
RIMCAS will show stage one and stage two warnings in a line above the tag, matching the tag width. Stage one alerts get orange, stage two gets red. This does not trigger an error border. The tag cannot be dragged by the RIMCAS text, even if the border expands to surround it.
ALT mode can be triggered by holding ALT (doh). This makes all TAGs behave as if fully correlated, aka. they show in full for all targets, ignoring filters.
You may change they keycode used to trigger ALT mode using the command .smr alt-mode <keycode>.
This value is stored in the ASR, all values from this table are acceptable.
Do note that this table specifies hexadecimal values, whereas the command requires decimal.
As an example, 0x12 refers to ALT and should be entered as 18.
As of v1.12.0, right clicking a radar target no longer spins the label (why was that a feature??). Instead, a context menu opens, currently featuring three actions. Drop and Acquire work as more easily accessible versions of the menu bar actions, except they also show whether they already active by appearing as XDrop or XAcquire and toggling said state. The Land / XLand button toggles the landing clearance state already described above, so that it can be changed outside of TopSky or the strip.
The context menu is closed by clicking on empty space or changing the ASEL aircraft.