EDDF-Triangle

[jomo]

Great idea for an event Jomo.
Unfortunately though 17:00UTC is 1.00am for me so a little late.
If it started at around 15:00UTC (11pm), I would be a regular.

Hi Lukosius
thank You for you interest - and good you remembered me.

Tell you the truth: I was thinking since some time about keeping open a little longer for the US - but that actually would only be necessary on weekdays (I guess). So I will now consider maybe opening earlier. But first we will see now how that develops - and if it is half way crowded, then believe me: 4h (like now) is a lot! (Especially if there are lots of newbies!)

So - let us review that idea after a few weeks - and then see how things develop and what the ATC-team thinks!
thanks joe

[Trez]

hi,

ke guys the reward(s) are done i have made the following:
1st place c172 livery (featuring colored triangles)
2nd place c172 livery (featuring blue triangles)

now i need you guys (Jomo and D-EKEW) to pm me the text that i should write on the wing(s) if you don't pm me in time i will make the text. the livery might be updated and this events winner will get the update when finished

Atc's participating will also get the livery if aloud by D-EKEW and or Jomo

[mischka]

This is an excellent idea... but!

it would be better if the airports with atc would be a bit further apart, ie outside of the chat range! It's really annoying to fly into EDDF and get all the time some messages from eddk or rammstein or whatever. EHAM and LFPO and Hamburg are within short distance of EDDF and have nice buildings too, just for example.

and unless you have a c172p or something, eddf-ellx or eddf-eddk are just too short.. IRL I'd take the car for these distances

[jomo]

it would be better if the airports with atc would be a bit further apart, ie outside of the chat range! It's really annoying to fly into EDDF and get all the time some messages from eddk or rammstein or whatever. EHAM and LFPO and Hamburg are within short distance of EDDF and have nice buildings too, just for example.

You are very right - and belief me: For an ATC, who really has to (try to) read and analyze all that lines (interesting or not!) it is even worse!

On the other hand, especially that problem is the best promoter for using FGCOM (and not just 122.75 and/or Mumble, both of them are even worldwide). That promotion is the second idea for that setup - in addition to promote "controlled flying".

So we try to find a compromise between people that like to practice "controlled flying/approaches" and those just using it as a stop in between a longer journey. And we watched since a long time other ATC's trying to start e.g. at EHAM, EDDM, EDPP, LFPG, EGLL, etc. etc: That was not really used very much - although many flights from EDDF were going there (when no ATC was there)!

And even though last Sunday turned out rather disappointing - the ATC-team for now will continue to keep it going - and get it going using FGCOM (not as a prereq - but as a strong proposal!).
Thanks for your comment
joe ATCjomo

[icecode]

it would be better if the airports with atc would be a bit further apart

I am agree with you, it is annoying to see the messages of ATCs that aren't controlling you, but making 4 flights with 1 hour of duration each one will be too much, I don't know if every pilot will be able to do that!

Just a pilot opinion.

Cheers.

[mischka]

Well, like I said I don't think it takes 1 hour to travel 100 miles in an airplane.. you can do that even in a porsche or a BMW I flew from eddb-eddf the other day and that took me just over an hour. So just to put a little bit more distance between the airports on atc would help a great deal, I think. I also think that ATC is much more interesting on landing then on departure.

@jomo: whenever possible I try to use fgcom because it's just waaaaay cooler I'm glad to see you are making this a regular event, so I know when to fly to EDDF again.

by the way, I haven't received your invoice for the new grass at EDDF yet!?

regards

Mischka aka AVA0014

[D-EKEW]

There is a reason for those four airports being in 'chat' range as ther are several advantages to it:
- as this event is primarily to learn about ATC procedures (both for ATC-s and pilots of course) and like this you can see what more experienced pilots are doing. Like repeating ATC commands , using VOR-s (and their radials) and DME to get into ILS intercept position or even not to change altitude and heading without ATC allowing it.
- Flying at FL310 for an hour or more is boring. The fun part (I think) is navigating by hand, hopping VOR-s, changing NAV freq.s / QNH quickly while ATC is saying something, flying down a ILS in bad weather without seeing the runway until 200' above ground and making sure you don't stall the aircraft and find yourself 100m before the threshold with your nose stuck in the ground. So we are trying to get everyone as many take-offs and landings as possible in the shortest period of time.
- getting everyones communication is realistic! It is perfectly normal that on busy airports a large number of pilots are talking to ATC. You just need to make sure you pick out the right messages, immediately do what it says, confirm the command while being in perfect control of your aircraft. I mean really, what is so difficult about that?

But I agree if this event gets a lot of participants and most of them are using chat (and not FGCOM) we might want to think about using airports that are out of 'chat' range. But for now I think it is ok.

Cheers

[AJC]

Hello again everyone,

So to start I am slightly dissapointed at the turn out this weekend but ATC's were there and available which is a very good start. I'm not sure why the numbers were low possibly due to timing or the good weather but i agree with Jomo that we will continue to provide the event on Sunday's.

Relaing now to the MPchat disscussion, i am agreeing with D-EKEW in that we should keep the current rhombus/triangle despite the short proximity. I think with D-EKEW that enlarging the zone which I have considered would merely increase airbourne times and again the traffic density would further decrease. Also, it is good to be able to go from airport to airport reasonably quickly and adapting to new VOR's, NDB's or vectoring depending on the ATC. Whilst MPchat has been a problem previously, i see the only soloution being FGcom AND MPchat combined. For now at least Mumble is a good communication between ATC's and use would confuse between FGcom and Mumble chats.

Now linking to the FGcom use problem, what we need are more experienced pilots or Pilots like if i can name him Stefan who was willing to learn and by the end of the night was a great pilot with ATC.
So I think that covers the current issues from my percpective for now however I am having trouble with my new Windows 7 laptop and trying to install flightgear and ATC-ML and decrease the frame rate is not working and after 3 downloads and ruining the downloads, i am beginning to give up so I may not be on ATC until I can find either a way around it or outside help. Anyone reading this who could help with increasing frame rates, installing scenery and adding aircraft on the Windows version of flightgear i would be very grateful if they could PM me.

Thanks to all ATC's and everyone who continues to use the EDDF and area services,

AJC
ATC_AJC
DH-1748

P.s Jomo, a new proposal I occasionally find FGcom to busy to talk to ground whilst you are guiding planes in as ATC. Could you consider having two frequencies at EDDF during busy times?

[mischka]

Flying at FL310 for an hour or more is boring.

well, on a distance of 100 miles you wont get that far up, anyway.. and any distance under 500 miles or so is unrealistic for a 777, for example.. commercial jets=long distances.

By thew way, you can do a lot interesting things while cruising on fl310... shagging the stewardess, for example

but fun aside, I agree that the most interesting part is take-off and landing. I'm looking forward to the days where I can take an md81 or something and fly eddf-egll-eddf and have atc on eddf on both departure and arrival.

keep up the good work, guys!

[AJC]

I'm looking forward to the days where I can take an md81 or something and fly eddf-egll-eddf and have atc on eddf on both departure and arrival!

Just out of interest, EGLL is as i like to think of it my home airport and I am looking into having the scenery done properly on it etc but if there was enough interest from you and other pilots who enjoy cruising at FL300+, I would be willing to control the airport during the event and more generally as an ATC airport. At the moment traffic at EGLL is rare compared to EDDF but it is a key airport and with scenery would be an equal to EDDF. It's position is opposite EHAM, about a 110 HDG to EDDF and a 180 to Barcelona. It is also at least 250mi from EDDF so pilots in the event who would like to cruise high or just land outside the MPchat range for the EDDF triangle could do so.

Any comments welcomed,
Thanks,

AJC

[Arthur Maiden]

Great fling this evening, although the ATC's don't seem to be able to differentiate between a small c172 and a 777 (even after being repeatedly asked why i was going 88kts )

Another point I'd like to bring up is the fact that the ATC's don't seem to be able to let a person fly VFR in between the controlled airports, they can't seem to acknowledge the other air users, apart from the IFR, and try to control those aircraft who wish to fly without ATC's interference, although there are moments when a pilot needs to comply with an ATC's commands during a VFR flight (ill post about it later from both pilot and ATC's point of view...)

[Omega]

Great fling this evening, although the ATC's don't seem to be able to differentiate between a small c172 and a 777 (even after being repeatedly asked why i was going 88kts )

Yes, that was me, but before i ask you i saw on my pilot list that you were a c172p going with 87-90 kts, a 777 would crash at this speed
90 kts is low speed for a cessna anyway, in wikipedia it says that the cruising speed of a c172 is 122 kts, Vne is 158 kts... excuse me if i'm wrong.
I am not a real ATC or pilot and i may not understand a few procedures used in real life but i'm trying to understand them and ATC aircrafts in
FG the best way i can.

[D-EKEW]

Arthur very good point. In real life there are control zones that are placed around an airport and this is where controled flight is manditory. As a real pilot flying VFR and going into these without asking permission a couple of times will cost you your pilots licence.
Sadly these control zones are not implemented to be brought up in both FG or MPmap (please correct me if I am wrong!). So we ask you to contact ATC ~60NM from the airport or when the ATC where you are flying from gives you permission to change frequency. We get kinda nervous when someone crosses an approach route 20NM from the airport, changing altitude all the time and not answering. Just tell ATC what you are up to (heading, altitude, destination etc) and you will be fine.

And 88kts is a bit slow for a c172 on cruise. Like every Part23 aircraft (below 5700kg Maximum Takeoff Weight) the stall speed with full flaps must be at least 61kts. So with flaps UP, with 88kts I asume you are pretty close to stall the aircraft! Always good to have a nice margin to you stall speed.
The green arc on your airspeed indicator shows the speeds you can fly safely with flaps retracted. The white arc with flaps extended.

[Ernest1984]

Omega was that you as "ATC" in EDDF yesterday??
Somebody was sitting there as ATC and told me couple times to change the airport, but i wanted to be ATC-controlled!

[Omega]

Omega was that you as "ATC" in EDDF yesterday??

No, I'm never ATCing in EDDF, only jomo and AJC are ATCing there and sometimes a few others when jomo and AJC are not online.