Monday 13 June 2016

ATC Weekend

Hi folks!

Its been a slow weekend, but Saturday had a number of people flying in so that was cool. I have been experimenting with some routing techniques and I think I'm making some good improvements. One main area I know I need to improve on is my radio technique, this has been pointed out a few times. So I'm working on this too.

I'm going to be looking at getting some buildings in the airport over the next couple of weeks. It looks like the floating terminals and their gates. I think the main terminal building will be trickier but I'm going to do my best. If anyone knows about this stuff and would like to help out then I really could do with it, it looks like I am going to have to build some of my own models and frankly there is only so much room in my head for so much.

What I'm planning

I am working on figuring out the ICAO.procedures file format so I can offer SID/STAR files for your autopilot. The wiki on this is pretty poor, there is no definition information and pretty much 2 whole pages and the only useful information on them is the location of the files ... go figure.

Once I have worked this out I will probably publish what I learned on here so its not so hard for other people in the future. I have yet to look at the XML layout of the models, I'm hoping I can load these into the blender or some other VR tool I have experience with (I used to be a Virtual Reality content creator and community host).


Hello there!

I had a visitor from someone who said they are a reader, but at that moment everything was getting crazy on mumble (see troll rating below) so I'm sorry I didn't see your chat after you were parked up; it gets crazy sometimes.
But hello to "Goose" and I'm glad you came to visit. I hope you pop in again and have a chat.
 

A few flights

 I had a few nice flights, some regulars came through and so many fighter aircraft this weekend. the F-14 seems to be getting very popular. I have had a brief read up on the military phraseology a little, I do forget bits here and there though.

If you are one of these pilots and you want to fly as a group thats great, but please elect one of your group as the formation leader beforehand, it makes things so much simpler. And just because you are in a fighter jet does not mean you get priority over other traffic, Stansted is a commercial airport and commercial aircraft will get priority.

That being said; I do enjoy it when its not at "peak" times where there are lots of liners inbound, this is a bad time to to pattern flying.



Troll


The troll was a bit more active this week, at one point they were directly targeting me, but they didn't have the staying power for someone thinks having your own troll is like a trophy.  He was mildly irritating  but not really very fun this time. His act had no thought put into it like the other guy and he was obviously pandering to the audience (I could manipulate him to change his name). The most sophisticated they could come up with was joinquit and setting their recording device as the audio monitor.

Troll rating: 2/10 - A poor effort all round.



Thursday 9 June 2016

ATC Evening, a nice flight and ATCPie

Hi everyone,

I hope you all recovered from my last post! crazy eh!


I did a short flight from EGSS to EIDW which is one of my favorite routes. This time I flew the SID called BUZAD 4S which seemed to make sense at the time, and hell Luton wasn't online at the time so I didn't feel too bad about violating their airspace.

As you can see I have been fiddling with the atmospheric settings so I can have 3D clouds and better scattering, but if I have too much on I get software crashes often. The left image has that weird bar on it, it has something to do with my screen capture process. For some reason it also makes things move about, if I have OpenRadar open then it will cause the view to shift south-west by 40 miles.

 


The weekend was fairly routine ATC event, here are some shots of Sunday night. I have been trying to work on my queuing technique lately and on this occasion it seemed to work quite well.  I had a good rate of attendance too, which is great! I love visitors!

 

Thanks to T-URBO for standing in for me for an hour on Sunday night, I had to dash from the computer and he ran the tower for me, and what would you know, it got busy right at that moment. When I got back I did a bit of ground control whilst he cleared his queue. It was pretty interesting to see someone else run the tower.


ATCPie

I have been experimenting with ATCPie, the work-flow is very different but it has so many cool and useful features that I keep going back to look at it. My main issue now is FP handling, the work-flow is very different to what I am used to I just need to get a handle on the best way to be efficient and not keep people waiting. I have yet had the option to push to the flight-plan exchange server working, but that should be a neat feature.

I like all the additional windows and the fact you can undock anything and have it on another monitor, I REALLY like that.



Troll

The troll was much better this time. He logged in as the name of a country and then played awful music from that country, then when they would leave and rejoin as a new country and go again. He did about 8 different countries all with their own music lined up, the guy actually researched it beforehand!
Troll rating 5/10 = Somewhat irritating (Including 2 bonus point for creativity)

Monday 6 June 2016

Stansted Airport Visit

Hi folks,
Its ATCJay here again with another post. If you have been reading regularly then you will know that I alluded to something cool in my last post, well today it shall be revealed!


Do you know where this could be?

That's right, its Stansted Control Tower, the bloody real one!

I wrote an email to someone at EGSS asking for a picture or two and a couple of questions, 'great' I thought, if I'm really lucky they might reply ... so as you might expect I almost caused a major trouser incident when they emailed me back inviting me to the tower. And as you might guess, being England, it pissed it down raining!


I don't know why, but for some reason I thought that the tower would be pretty much an empty tube with the cab at the top, nope its rooms and stuff all the way up, who would have thought it.

I'll go into some of the questions I asked and things we spoke about but so much was spoke about I doubt I could capture how cool it was. I was surprised that there were only 3-4 people in there, they were all friendly but very busy. I was a bit nervous about talking to one of them when he said hi because he still had his headphones on and .. well if I get distracted all that happens is someone flies through someone else or someone gets cross at me for making them wait.

I had some issues with the camera deleting files, rather not giving me an option not to delete them, so not all of the pictures I wanted made it onto the card but some of them are here (and should be click-able to enlarge)

I asked about how things are routed there, The routes are mainly used for radio-out situations and they use direct vectoring for approaches. And the SIDs are incorporated into the flight plan which is done during filing process so it sounds like they don't really have to deal with that.

I would have LOVED to get some pictures of their equipment but this wasn't possible. I'm not actually sure how detailed I can be in describing it. But to be honest the in-tower hardware that you could see was mainly just some very nice looking flat screens and an stunning view out of the window.

They did have some nice tech for strip management which looks very similar to the strip management software for Vatsim, but a lot more hands on. The actual hardware would probably be in a rack somewhere, I'm not interested in that I've seen servers before.

They had a training room which was the last place I looked at in the tower, unfortunately this was all powered down, but wow what a set-up! There were screens as big as TVs to mock up the window view and a series of monitors arranged in a manner to replicate the tower position so the training reinforces muscle memory. These guys are smart!


I have realised how spoiled we are with OpenRadar's radar display, they do not have all the SIDs and STARs on theirs.



It was really cool to see take-off from the actual tower, no ORCam required! There was a couple of other events I would have liked to photograph but I was too interested in speaking to the guy that we were just watching everything go down. Someone let off a fire extinguisher on Alpha West, but I didn't see any flames and it looked like nothing was damaged and no one was hurt.

Watching an arrival that was due to park at the business centre miss taxiway Golf because he was going pretty fast, was something that felt very familiar.

 
This picture is my favourite, I know you probably think that's weird but on my evenings on FlightGear this is where all the action happens. When someone parks its usually here, at Alpha East. I was looking down at this and thinking "Oh yeah, there’s SkyBoat and KL-666 down there waiting for my slow ass to give taxi clearance"


I like would like to give a big thank you to everyone at Stansted Tower for letting me come and visit and putting up with me endless questions. you guys are really cool and do a great job!

Friday 3 June 2016

About emergencies

Hi,
I thought I would post about something that we all encounter on flight simulators; People declaring an emergency in order to jump the queue.

I don't mind emergency procedure practice but I would appreciate some advanced warning that you are going to practice. The issue arises around multiple people doing it at once, it creates a very unrealistic scenario which is less fun for everyone and increases the ATS workload significantly. If done properly we could turn it into something fun we can do.

I have heard a few versions of procedures for running low on fuel and everyone seems to just do what they think is right, myself included, so I thought the best thing to do is check what the CAA have to say on the subject.

Perhaps we can come to some procedure that applies more closely to FlightGear so people can practice these things at the same time add a little more realism for everyone.

So in order to see how the CAA handle these situations here is an extract;
Source; CAA Manual of Air Traffic Services - Part 1 (CAP413 ed5)
Section1: chapter 4 (Control of Traffic) pages 6 and 7.

10. Flight Priorities

10.1 Normally requests for clearances shall be dealt with in the order in which they are received and issued according to the traffic situation. However, certain flights are given priority over others and the following table shows the categorisation.

10.1 When two or more flights of different categories request clearance the flight with the highest category shall be dealt with first. Flow control procedures are implemented and actioned by the Central Flow Management Unit. A flow control priority will be allocated automatically on receipt of a flight plan.

10A. Minimum Fuel and Fuel Shortage 

 10A.1 Once in possession of the estimated delay for an approach a pilot will determine whether or not he can continue to the aerodrome or divert to a suitable alternative aerodrome.

10A.2 A pilot's declaration of "MINIMUM FUEL" indicates that no further fuel diversion options are available where the aircraft is committed to land at the pilot’s nominated aerodrome of landing with not less than 'final reserve fuel'. However, “MINIMUM FUEL” RTF phraseology is not universally used by every aircraft operator and pilot.

Note: Final reserve fuel is typically fuel for 30 minutes of flight for turbine powered aircraft or 45 minutes for piston powered aircraft. (EASA-OPS)
10A.3 Controllers are not required to provide priority to pilots of aircraft that have declared "MINIMUM FUEL" or that have indicated that they are becoming short of fuel.

10A.4 Controllers shall respond to a pilot's declaration of “MINIMUM FUEL” by confirming the estimated delay he can expect to receive expressed in minutes if the pilot is en-route to, is joining, or is established in an airborne hold; or by expressing the remaining track mileage from touchdown if the aircraft is being vectored to an approach.

10A.5 Once in possession of either the estimated delay or remaining track mileage, the pilot will determine whether or not he can continue to the aerodrome with or without declaring a fuel emergency. Controllers shall keep pilots informed of any increase in delay or increase in track mileage after the pilot's initial declaration of "MINIMUM FUEL" following which the controller can expect the pilot to declare an emergency.

10A.6 Controllers shall respond to a pilot who has indicated that he is becoming short of fuel but has not declared "MINIMUM FUEL", by confirming the estimated delay he can expect to receive expressed in minutes if the pilot is en-route to, is joining, or is established in an airborne hold; or by expressing the remaining track mileage from touchdown if the aircraft is being vectored to an approach; then ask the pilot if he wishes to declare an emergency.

10A.7
Pilots declaring an emergency should use the following RTF phraseology "MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY" or “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY FUEL” and controllers shall provide such aircraft with flight priority category A (ICAO Annex 6).

10B. Medical Emergencies

10B.1 Pilots who allude to medical emergencies on-board, e.g. a sick passenger, but who do not formally declare an emergency or indicate that the person on board is seriously ill, shall be asked to confirm that they are declaring an emergency. In the absence of such a declaration, controllers are not required to give priority to the flight.

10C. Flight Priority Categories

10C.1 Controllers shall give priority to aircraft according to flight priority category listed below, where category A is the highest priority and Z is the lowest priority.

:END

What do you think?









Friday 27 May 2016

Weekend at EGSS

Hi folks!

I had another great weekend at Virtual Stansted again so expect some screenshots. Some interesting things have been happened since my last post. There is the FlightGear Fall Festival  starting November the 5th (2016) which sounds like its far off but its already being planned out to be a great event.

The event will be held in the U.K, so that means that the whole of Europe will be a frenzy of activity with ATCs and pilots aplenty. I can say that I will be at EGSS for the event and will be controlling from REDFA down to my doorstep. So when the event comes around come and pay me a visit.

I am working on adding some scenery for Stansted so it is ready for the event. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to doing that so its yet another learning curve. I will initially start with the gates and jetways and if I can find an object large enough the terminal building.

A note about routes, if you are coming to Stansted grab a copy of the airport plate from my description in mumble (mumble.allfex.org) and have a look at the routes. The SIDs are easy and the best STAR to use would be something in ABBOT.

Before I get into my (brief) weekend log I would like to mention that I have an unusual week ahead of me, and should REALLY give me something to write about (if I have any luck with pictures!). I'm not going to jump the gun by shouting off what it is (some of you I know already know) but its bloody brilliant and you really should subscribe so you don't miss it.

Saturday
Was a nice night, some familiar faces came by and went off to Ireland which was cool, which you can see below in the screenshots. What I tried here was bunching up the outbound flights more so it was more efficient. I find now that if I just let the pilots contact me when they are ready I don't make them feel rushed and I have a little more time myself.

In this situation what happened was everyone filed their flight plan before they did anything else, everyone was pretty much chilling out and agreeing where to go. The pilots decided their destination and I had a succession of  flight plans to set up, then it was a matter of getting them there. I just about had holding points S1, S3, R1 and R3 filled up and as soon as the currently departing AC was positive climb the next one was lining up. It was all running just like its supposed to! it was very cool!

Here are some pics of that:
 








One of my visitors on Saturday was flying Donald Trumps aircraft, he kindly sent me some screenshots and said I can post them, so here they are.





Sunday was REALLY quiet.

There isn't much more I can say really, yet here is a picture of something happening on Sunday.



Friday 13 May 2016

FlightGear Spring Festival - We love Japan!

Hi everyone!

This is my first post after the FlightGear Spring Festival, and it was SO much fun! I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did and I would like to say thank you to everyone that joined in.


Festival time at RJGG

I was stationed at RJGG with ElGaton running centre, the airport was really nice looking (from the pilots perspective). This was my best experience with having a centre operating over me. We had quite a few people come by and the region was fairly busy, I would call this festival a success.

I met a lot of new people and spoke to members of the FlightGear community that I wouldn't normally see which was great. Trying out a new airport was really interesting and I started out with "this is really hard" but by the second night and some more documents (Thanks ElGaton) it hit the floor running and started to appreciate the way things are done over there.

Here are a couple of pictures of RJGG airport that t-urbo took for me. (you can click these)

  

The DME approach for the airport was really difficult for many pilots, its a circle! it was also a challenge for me as ATC to vector someone round a circle, the area has very few fixes, only 4 VORs and a couple of DME. But I gave it a go and I was really impressed with my progress, ill post some pictures of it here. Big kudos go out to pilot BA_007 for flying this SO well and actually got the "feel" for what I was vectoring and I don't think he had the DME route available to him at the time (I could be wrong).

There are a number of pictures here all showing a time separation of about 2 minutes, observe the contact trails showing how well he tracked the approach.

    

So "Pilot of the Day" went to ...


Busy busy!

We had quite an active service in my area of Japan which was cool, here is a screen of the tower activity on Sunday night.



And we also had lots and lots of people flying, it was fantastic!











The Troll

Yep there was a troll being a pain, spamming and all that rubbish. But like all trolls they had a poor attention span and soon left. To critique their griefing I would say it was unimaginative and lacked the real pazazz that really gets people going. Spamming swear words and lame ass 'insults' don't really cut it I would rate this troll at a 2/10 which rates them as "Slightly less than annoying", sorry pal.


The end

Well, the event came to an end, and on mumble all the centres came round and thanked everyone for coming which was really nice I thought. And on this note I hope you enjoyed my brief summary of the event and the pictures. Until next time happy flying, and I hope to see you at my usual haunt of London Stansted (EGSS).

Friday 29 April 2016

Catching up and some news!

Good day!

I have been absent doing other things but I shall be trying to do more regular sessions now; you can now visit me on Saturdays and Sundays as a regular slot and I am on during the week late evenings most nights.

On Thursday the 21st of this month President Obama came to England, and what would you know he came in through Stansted, very cool!!

I am still looking to get the APP and TWR audio but due to legal issues in the UK surrounding the capturing of ATC messages it might be difficult. Here is the Standard's report on his arrival.

The London Stansted official Facebook page posted this picture for the event, to me it looks like he was debarking at the Business Centre, what do you think?

I was in my tower at the time, its a shame that I didn't know about it earlier I would have liked someone to try and simulate it real time, that would have been pretty neat.

FlightGear news

The event this weekend (Spring Festival) is being hosted around Asia and the Orient, I hope everyone is going to turn out for a fly! I will be in my tower as usual, so if you want a break from the high-traffic airways come to London and visit, I'll even get the kettle on.

In November TheJabberWocky group has another event lined up for early November, this event will be hosted in and around the UK. I have put my name forward to ATC in my tower for that event but I think they might want experts on for that event so I may have to sit out (I'll grab a remote AP somewhere else).

EGSS News

I have added a new webpage to my server where I will be uploading all the PDF files required for the airport. There are some there now, but I will be updating it with the more comprehensive versions. The link to that site is here.

I have an alteration to the route "ABBOT 1F" on my chart than the official one, this is just to clean up traffic above the airport and to make the turn into ABBOT holding/pattern easier. I shall now explain:
  • ABBOT 1F official takes from BPK direct to ADNAM(fix), ABBOT(fix).
  • ABBOT 1F modified take deom BPK to BKY to ADNAM(fix) ... and so on.
This means you do not have a hairpin right turn at ADNAM and I can keep that FL060 traffic away from approaches. 

Squawk Codes
As you know I do not always use these (and I will be more in the future, see below) but if you want that level of realism that feel free to say something like "with you, using squawk xxxx" or when making contact, if you mention a squawk code on contact I will then take it that you are using them and I'll do the same. Not everyone uses them or knows how, so I do not automatically assign them.

ATC Pie
I am looking at moving to ATCPie for my client software, it looks good but I have a few issues with it. When these are sorted out I will be using squawks more often .

Rant
I do not use direct vectoring for everything, I will use VOR's and fixes (if the pilot can see fixes) and I will route ALL inbound via the ABBOT approach (I rarely use CASEY as its the same as ABBOT with 5 degrees skew). I will also use LOREL but that simply ends up being an ABBOT approach once the AC has passed BKY.

There is a reason For this, when I started off I was direct vectoring EVERYONE to the runways, and once you have more than a couple of people coming in that way it becomes a mess, especially when you have a couple of outbounds too. I spent a lot of time learning and internalising the routes and so I will use them.

This does not mean I expect the pilots to know them too, if a pilot does know the route then tell me and all is great. If you do not know the route that's perfectly fine, I will just vector you on that route.

All in all I am trying to provide as much of a service as I am, if you are passing by I will update your FP for you. I'll check weather on your route if you ask, and outbounds get their route checked if they are unsure. Thats right, that extra 1 minute delay some people experience when they go somewhere I am unfamiliar with is down to me searching the exit points and planning your route for you.

Tips for new ATC
I am new too, and NONE of us are 100% perfect ATC. Bare this in mind.
  • Get the CAP documents from the CAA, these are great!
  • Give heading slightly early and add/subtract 1 degree to the heading for every mile you gave the heading in advance.
  • You are in control, but you are a service. Try to be helpful and treat pilots like valued customers, they are the nice guys!
  • Its not all about us, we are only there to help pilots play a flying game. We only see our screens and its easy to think of it as an ATC game, it is not its a flight simulator for which we are volunteers.
  • Pick one airport and "move in", make it yours and be proud of your reputation.
  • Direct vector EVERYTHING until you know your routes, and vector using chat as much as you can, this REALLY helps to reinforce learning.
  • When things get busy, take a breath, slow down, redirect someone across the map and back again if you have to. The "long way round" is better than an frustrated, stressed ATC. Planes take time to get from one place to another, this gives you time when you need it.
  • If you make a mistake, its OKAY, real ATC make mistakes all the time, no one will complain if you correct yourself, readout someone's callsign slightly wrong, or gave someone the wrong vector etc.
  • Listen to the pilots! Those guys really know their stuff.
  • And MOST importantly of all be consistent!! Even if you never use routes, SID, STAR or any procedures at all, have your own procedures in your head. Which VORs wil you use to route people into your active runway? pick them and stick to them, pilots will remember them next time.
Okay, its time for me to go now, I hope you guys found this post interesting and ill leave you with one more picture.


The end of a weekend shift at EGSS, one last inbound. (This display is showing the modification to ABBOT 1F which I mentioned earlier)

Thanks for visiting EGSS
Jay / Morlan (Stansted Approach/Tower)

Saturday 26 March 2016

EGKK -> LOWI + Update

Hi,

I have not posted in a little while as i have been busy on other projects. I have done a few other flights and had a few ATC days that I have not logged as they were not very eventful.

EGKK -> LOWI
This was a nice flight I have been trying to get right for a while, the problem with this route is;
1: Fuel
2: Mountains

Getting there is not a problem of course but the problem this time was crashing into the mountains (My apologies to any skiers). Next time I shall fly to Munich then from there to LOWI. I think its about time I downloaded the routing information for that airport.


UPDATE:
I have been getting a LOT of help with the routing for EGSS I shall be providing links to the documents ill be using for routing (The published routes available from the CAA), Thanks Mike! Anyone intending on visiting EGSs whilst I am on ATC, please ask which contact point you should be coming in to if you don't have the routes.

There is a holding at ABBOT which I will be making a lot of use of so expect that if you visit me and there is a queue then I will probably use ABBOT holding to get you down to approach altitude.

Lastly I have worked out how to use the ATIS recording system so When I am on ATC I will update the ATIS recording every hour and assign a sequence identifier to it so if you have listened to this please tell me what information you have when you contact then I know if you have heard my message or just looked up METAR for yourself (which some people do).

If anyone has suggestions how I can improve my ATC skills, things you would like me to do differently or any special handling then feel free to contact me via this blog, on the mumble server or even post a comment.

All comments are welcome.

Mors

Saturday 30 January 2016

ATC Log

Well, I spent most of the weekend at EGSS tower, and I must say it was one of the best ATC weekends so far. I have some pictures which ill insert below. We had a plane party at Alpha-East with some great landings and landing recoveries from all the wind problems recently.

I have learned a fair amount about routes too! I have started adding some XML files to to EGSS which if anyone thinks its a good idea then post comments and I'll put them up for download so if anyone else wants to use EGSS then they can have the routes.

I have updated the "ATC at EGSS" page (linked to on the right) with information about visiting EGSS when I am in the tower. I will add the routes to this and some guidelines/hints that might help.

This week has been a great week, I have learned SO much I'm not even sure if I can express it all in one post! We have had some visitors from all over the world this week. I have learned most about vectoring, routes and more procedural stuff.

Okay, here is a little of what I learned recently;
  • Vectoring into turns: I try to do it gradually, this means take a position around the apex of the turn I want them to manoeuvre, just as they are reaching this position I give a vector halfway between their current and the exit, when at this point simply give exit+10 degrees and they will come around. One pilot even remarked that on his map when I did this it looked like he was perfectly on the bow line. 
  
  • Not so accurate: I have very recently been told that real ATC only give headings where the last digit is a 0 or 5. Makes sense due to the fuzzy nature of flying, also it seems to let the pilots let on edge trying to keep such a tight course, thanks guy that told me this thing.

  • Navaids are my friend!: Yeah, now I can use simple routes I have been using these, and I'm trying to be smart about how I do it too, as you never know when a pilot knows about it or not (this IS the internet after all) so I give a heading TO a position, if the pilot in his read back just said "HDG to blah blah" whatever waypoint or route then I know I can use whichever safely.

A friend on FlightGear took some pictures when I was in the tower, he said I could post them here, so here is a picture of me giving a shortened ATIS to a pilot (I sometimes cut the radio bit off if I'm already in voice and just using the ATIS button to be clear).

In this picture you can see the Stansted tower model.

If any FG scenery makes are watching this ... ahem .. ahem .. more buildings please. But the tower model is nice.



And here is my friend leading a regular departure to his holding position.

I love having ground crew! so much fun to have people there with you.







Okay, I'll post up very soon when I have something constructive to say, I'm also working on "Morlan's tips for newbies" which will be a list of the things I was doing wrong and what I did to fix them, and some things I find helpful when things get hairy.

Also, if any FG Flyers are reading this come visit me at Stansted, you aren't in the mood to fly that's fine Alpha East is reserved parking for the Stansted Airport Chat Group.




Thursday 21 January 2016

ATC Day + Carrier Trial

It was ATC Day today and yet again I learned something and stretched some muscles. Vectoring is getting a little easier, I had to vector a flight in but missed on the first attempt from trying to squeeze everything in too quickly, rushing.

The last two flights to leave was BAW172 who had a few issues with a 757 but ended up with what looked like a nice flight, and PIA-109 which was a 747-400 aircraft. The last four flights were all to EDDH. I hear EDDH and EDDF ATC is very good, I intend to stop by in a ground car and listen in for a while some time.



I found that the hardest bit is working out the turn rate and response time of the pilot. So in future I'll use a pattern to vector people in then as they are following the pattern i can judge these two factors as there does not seem to be any standardisation in VR world.

I found it much easier to use different vectoring relativity depending on whether its incoming, outgoing or in a pattern. This is what I have worked out so far;

  • Incoming: Use headings until they are close or in the close pattern.
  • Outgoing: Use headings after clearing their first turn.
  • Close quarters and Pattern flying, relative to the aircraft eg: "Turn left 9 0 degrees
Although I have found that there are a few occasions that this scheme fails, like when its just easier to select the aircraft, point at the NAV they are being vectored to and read off the heading.

The Aircraft Carrier is a great experience and I think I'll do that again. Someone landed on me but I didn't get the chance to put them on the lift. There are issues with this, the radar is not very capable, vectoring is neigh impossible like that.

I have been thinking about changing my ATC Day airport to EGLL, on the days I do ATC there is someone at EGKK now, so lets see how that works out, I don't want to step on anyone's toes and having two close close together might turn out to be pointless, but I'll have a go and see what happens. So there may come a time where I start my regular thing at a completely different location.

I have some questions I need to find answers too, and if anyone reading this knows then please do comment, I will post something up when I have found answers to them.

  • Do FG players want/like to use the transponders? (no one has really used them so far)
  • Are there some angles, response times or timing values or a timing protocol I should be aware of when vectoring?
  • FGCom is great, Why do hardly any people use it?

Okay, that's about all I have for this post, thanks to all the pilots that came though EGSS today, and here is a picture of the radar as I was figuring out how to configure the aircraft carrier.



Sunday 17 January 2016

Circuit Training

I did a little circuit training today at Chatteris airfield. I learned a few things. My handling is getting better and not using any autopilot to maintain headings was fun and great practice. I flew in a Cessna 127p Skyhawk (1981) and a Diamond DA 42. I really liked the Diamond , Here is a picture of it.

My initial flights were in the Cessna, I flew a left handed circuit targeting about 700ft, this varied a LOT because of the wind, wow those small planes feel it. I was also at a different airport for this section of my flight, I moved to a small UK airfield to avoid traffic (two AI liners fighting for a RW). Here are a few pictures of that part.

[PIC1]Awkwardly making my crosswind turn
[PIC2] The airliner train.

During my flight at Chatteris I also included a few landings at RAF Mildenhall. I kept coming in a little low, I find it quite hard to maintain a steep glide slope but it's getting better. The following pictures are a medley of my session.

 



Saturday 16 January 2016

ATC Day : 15/1/16

So on Friday I did an ATC day at EGSS (London Stansted). It was a slow day in general but there was an hour of excitement. I learned something new and practised vectoring. And I noticed that my VFR radio has improved, which is nice as I've been reading a bit about it.

I did notice that a lot of people were booted when getting within render range of the airport. I think the FlightGear people should add to their guidelines that you should visit the destination airport beforehand to make sure you have the terrain and scenery downloaded.

I think ill start using one of the larger airports next time to take advantage of having more than one runway.

The vectoring was quite new (I'm a beginner remember) but it was quite easy once you stop forgetting to keep the right aircraft selected when using the cursor.

I think the small aircraft that was initially training got a little frustrated because I had to route him around a bit. The problem here was players with the dodgy connections because they would just stop and go idle then carry on and the timing in the incoming queue would then be messed up.

I tried to solve this by spacing them out, but the problem with this was I felt this was frustrating for some pilots, although no one actually said so.

If anyone that is seeing this from the link in my ATC or flight event and has a tip, question, comment then this blog is the place to do that. If you comment to one of these posts then I'll reply as quickly as I can. If you have a criticism then post that too but if I am doing something wrong then please what I should be doing instead.

Sunday 10 January 2016

EGSS ATC

Morlan at Stansted Airport

Control Tower


On days that I am ATC on Stansted tower you will see me on the mumble server (mumble.allfex.org) in a channel called "EGSS_TW" my user-name will be the same.

On days where I have arranged a full "ATC Day" it will be announced on the flight plan website linked here. There are a few things I would ask anyone using my ATC services to keep in mind;
  • I am not an air-traffic controller professionally, I may get things wrong and I don't mind being corrected, I'm reading and learning all the time.
  • I will assume you know the airport OR have the document for it unless you tell me otherwise.
  • Please don't load up on my runway, choose a parking spot or move your aircraft before hitting the multi-player menu, you'll thank me for it.
  • I much prefer voice/radio over text, I have GFCom and mumble available.

Ground Crew

I have only had ground crew a couple of times, and it took me a little time to get used to it, I really appreciated having this available and if anyone wants to do this again I would gladly welcome to the help.

Information

Here is a link to the Stansted Airport runway and taxi information. This is the same document that I use to route ground traffic.
Stansted Airport Ground data. (This is a PDF document, I would recommend right clicking and selecting "save-as")

  Routes

 I have been using some routes for EGSS, I will publish the documets once I have cleaned through the routes that are not needed (routing to leeds etc). At the moment I can route via LOREL and ABBOT, it does not matter if you do not know the routes, when contacting EGSS just specify which VOB/nagaid you are aiming towards.

To make things easier. If you are routing from europe aim for either LAM@FL100 or ABBOT@FL100 and I can route/vector you from there as you wish, if you know the any routes for EGSS please let me know which one you are following and I will try my best to follow that route.




BA-122: EGKK -> KORD

Callsign: BA-112 Aircraft: Boeing 777-300LR
From: EGKK To: KORD
Trip time: 1h42m Elevation: ~20,000ft
Speed: 330kntsFGCom: 109.88Mhz
Flightrule: VFR ...

This was my first flight on this route and although very long, it was a good flight  I would recommend trying it out. There are a couple of things to watch out for;
1: Load LOTS of fuel, its a really long way, next time ill try EL instead of the LR.
2: You have to lower your altitude a little later, the air is a little more violent and the terrain is not quite as flat as Europe.

I had no ATC services for this flight but landing went well. There was a moment at ETA22m where the plane lost all power, some random failure! I had no idea that FlightGear would cause faults without me selecting one. I did a restart and everything seemed to go well after that apart from being a little lower and slower when I made my approach.

The KORD models are pretty nice and not overusing of runway lights like at Gatwick.  So in summary all my passengers arrived at their destination, I landed light and very slightly ahead of schedule I'll chalk this one up as a success.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

BA-112: EGSS -> EDDL

Flight Date: 03/01/2016


Callsign: BA-112 Aircraft: Boeing 777-300EL
From: EGSS To: EDDL
Trip time: 1h42m Elevation: ~12,000ft
Speed: 280kntsFGCom: 109.88Mhz
Flightrule: IFR ...
.

This was a shakedown run on a fresh install of FG, the trip went well except there was some landing issues due to traffic and a little fog on the runway, but the trip was from cold and dark at EGSS to dark and parked at EDDL.

This is one of my favorite trips to make as it is a nice short run and you often get to speak to other pilots in europe along the way. This was a mainly autopilot flight with manual only used for takeoff and at landing, although the actual approach was done VFR using the beacon but due to the bad weather the actual landing was manual.

Why I am doing this.

What am I doing here?

This is intended to be my flight log for the game FlightGear. If you are reading this and you do not play flight simulators then all this is probably going to be a bit of a mystery to you.

I am NOT a professional pilot (as you will no doubt see in the upcoming posts) but I do like to try. I will be trying to simulate certain flights and learning as I go. I have a little experience in flying (I have flown a small prop aircraft in real life and been passenger on commercial flights on occasion. That is the extent of my flying in real life, in the simulated world I have only (roughly) 60 hours of flight time, this makes me a rank amateur.

In addition to this I will have another section which will be about my sessions on the ATC (Air Traffic Control) which I am very inexperienced at, but I have had 3 successful 4 hour sessions so far. I will have a section for flights and a sections for ATC.

I will be posting flight plans and ATC events on this page so if you would like to come and join me in a flight or want to interact with me on ATC then this is the place to look. I will mainly be running a tower at EGKK (London Gatwick) and EGSS (London standsted (My prefered choice))airports.

I will also be doing occasional session at EGBL (Long Marston) for smaller aircraft as I have a fondness for this location. EGBL is a small location and the runway is fairly short but enough for small aircraft and just large enough for a Boeing 7X7 to take off (landing is more difficult).



So I have finished blurbing for this post, and now you know why this blog exists.