STARS Tips/Tricks

[Spoony90]

Won't flash to adjacent facility, but it should?

Forcing a flash from IF, but is on a correct NAS code. You'll need the adjacent facility codes i.e. YYY is one of mine, but works like this.

F9 4250 YYY ENTER

Then, reattempt the flash handoff. You have to take it out of IF first.

Will force it to the sector you are trying to flash to like the old ARTS FORCE method. Each facility has a 3 letter or digit code.

This would help us a lot at my Tracon. What facility you at? So I can get my tech ops guy to talk to your tech ops guy for the patch lol

 

[Mike1990]

At my facility 7 up/down you can use f16 up/down to de/combine it on the mid

 

[Termine]

F16 is just a macro button, we use it for that as well but you can bind any longer command to it.

 

[Acquired Taste]

Anyone else have issues where you sign on and then a minute or so later, all of the wx becomes unselected randomly even though it's enabled on your pref sets? It's a super annoying issue. I can either just enable them all again or sign on with someone else's initials and put one of their pref sets in and then sign back on to mine and it'll be good again. Any permanent solutions? I told my stars guy and he seemed uninterested

 

[Atcbrownie]

Anyone else have issues where you sign on and then a minute or so later, all of the wx becomes unselected randomly even though it's enabled on your pref sets? It's a super annoying issue. I can either just enable them all again or sign on with someone else's initials and put one of their pref sets in and then sign back on to mine and it'll be good again. Any permanent solutions? I told my stars guy and he seemed uninterested

This has been a STARS issue for years. Here at PCT, they "fixed" it by running a macro in the background after you sign in to turn WX on without you having to do anything. The problem with this fix is that if you type something in the 5ish seconds that it takes to run the macro, you can interrupt the macro which makes it not work.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a good fix for the issue that works 100% of the time. I tend to be a quick typer so I run into this issue quite often.

May I ask what facility you are at?

AW

 

[HenryTheAce]

The weather thing is annoying… had it happen to me yesterday. Took about 10-15 seconds for it to pop up after I had to enable all of my settings to turn it back on again.

 

[Jellismate]

The weather thing is annoying… had it happen to me yesterday. Took about 10-15 seconds for it to pop up after I had to enable all of my settings to turn it back on again.

At least at my facility, if you just sign in again the weather will display appropriately.

 

[Homsar]

Reviving this thread for a question -

The Pref Set of one of the controllers here has a weird thing we can’t fix. The unlabeled ADS-B quick look preview button in the top left corner displays the squawk code of most/all targets on other pref sets when depressed, but it doesn’t on the one she based hers off. We can’t find the command to toggle that on/off. Any ideas?

If anyone randomly has this issue, we finally found the solution - There’s a box in the DCB shift menu labeled “BEACON MODE-2” that was activated, apparently it needs to be deactivated to display beacon codes.

 

[GulfCharlie]

Bump for Auto Offset command for tags

 

[AB19]

Bump for Auto Offset command for tags

Multifunction o I isn't it?

 

[kombucha23]

Multifunction o I isn't it?

Yep.

 

[sizziano]

*0-3 on a tag will highlight the closest usable airport. 1-3 being categories and 0 helos.

 

[SquawkHijack]

Anyone have luck with imputing a VFR flight plan in to the NAS from STARS when a pop up calls up? What I mean is when ever the A/C calls up I try to input the FP as off of the XXX270030 (or wherever it is) going to ABC. I usually get a format error. However when I just put the arrival airport only the FP defaults that the A/C departed from our primary airport. I guess not that big of a deal considering it’s VFR but would like to know if I’m doing something wrong.

Don’t use a radial/DME fix and just type the nearest satellite airport, splat, destination and then continue inputting the rest of the CFTAP.

 

[rhombus]

Bump for Auto Offset command for tags

Multifunction-O-E (E is for enable)
Multifunction-O-I (I is for inhibit)

 

[Homsar]

Does anyone recall the command to make the blue primary targets on STARS smaller? I had it written down but misplaced it. I recall that It’s a global command, AKA prefsets do not alter the size and you must use this command instead.

[edit] Another controller recalled it, it’s MF 6 P A space E enter

 

[Stinger]

Does anyone recall the command to make the blue primary targets on STARS smaller? I had it written down but misplaced it. I recall that It’s a global command, AKA prefsets do not alter the size and you must use this command instead.

I never knew about that being an option. Only thing you can change is the brightness of the primary. If you could make the target smaller the separation rules of "don't let primary targets touch" don't make sense. I've been at 3 different STARS facilities and the targets have all been the same size.

 

[Acquired Taste]

I never knew about that being an option. Only thing you can change is the brightness of the primary. If you could make the target smaller the separation rules of "don't let primary targets touch" don't make sense. I've been at 3 different STARS facilities and the targets have all been the same size.

Pro tip: If you zoom in enough, you can almost always maintain green between.

 

[Homsar]

I never knew about that being an option. Only thing you can change is the brightness of the primary. If you could make the target smaller the separation rules of "don't let primary targets touch" don't make sense. I've been at 3 different STARS facilities and the targets have all been the same size.

We found it, I edited my post. The primaries are way too big at busy VFR towers without changing it.

 

[Stinger]

Pro tip: If you zoom in enough, you can almost always maintain green between.

I tried that years ago thinking it would be the case. The blue targets just gets proportionally bigger.

[edit] Another controller recalled it, it’s MF 6 P A space E enter

Is that to make the target smaller? What about to make it bigger?

 

[Termine]

it’s MF 6 P A space E enter

I recall seeing that command once, if I'm not mistaken aren't you putting the scope into Precision Runway Monitor mode? That's supposed to be a super specialized function, not one for providing general services. I agree with Stinger, that doesn't sound legal if you ever have responsibility for target resolution. At a Class D VFR tower you can get away with it, but don't think you can just do this when you're working a TRSA or something.