I contribute to an open-source ATC sim, and I'm looking to advance one of our current features. I know this is widely variable, but is there a typical example, either in distance from the airport, or altitude, that I can use to approximate when a pilot would switch to departure?
If you can give me an example of both so I can say "when N123AB climbs through altitude x OR is y miles from the airfield N123AB will contact departure". This would provide some more variation since we have a LOT of different aircraft types in the sim and they've all got different performance. Rates of climb and speeds would have a big impact here. This will be better than saying "after x amount of time N123AB contacts departure". Thanks for your help!