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.