elgaton wrote in Sun May 11, 2014 2:57 pm:I discussed this topic a bit with other NIATCA ATCs, most of us are willing to temporarily "relocate" to Spain. We thought it would be nice to provide "full service" (man all positions - ground, tower, approach) at a major airport like Barcelona (this way Madrid will remain open to free, uncontrolled flying) and/or to control other airports in the area (like Porto - that would be great for the mini-events METAL proposed).
As for the times, on Saturday/Sunday I'm usually available in the afternoon and in the evening (about 1230-1630 and 1800-2200 UTC, with DST in effect).
I too volunteer for ATC duty if you need help. I'm on the US east coast so we can probably patch things together for a continuous controlled zone I think. And of course I'm fine with whatever position needs to be filled, be it ground, tower or approach/departure.
elgaton wrote in Sun May 11, 2014 2:57 pm:I checked some approach plates for Barcelona; STARs there start about 60 NM away from the airport, so I think declaring the airspace in a 60 NM radius and up to FL130 "controlled" should be enough. (Of course, we still need to sort out the details to make this event as inclusive as possible - the posts by Lydiot and Rick Ace hit the nail on the head).
The only thing with Open Radar is that it "catches" everything within a radius larger than 60nm, so the list will be filled with a bunch of uncontrolled traffic spawning and disappearing repeatedly. I don't think it's any way around it though since a larger radius would probably include too much area of control. I am curious to see what people think about this.
elgaton wrote in Sun May 11, 2014 2:57 pm:As for communication, should there be an accepted default method for the event or should we just let people use whatever they have/like?
We should definitely set an official method (having more than one voice communication system is not practical and realistic at all). As KL-666 said, Mumble (plus text chat as a backup/for those pilots who can't use voice) is popular around here.[/quote]
This is a good question. I've used neither Mumble nor FGcom since my laptop doesn't like FGcom unfortunately (Win
. Is it correct that FGcom has 'channels' so that approach and tower can have different frequencies and you won't hear each other? Because if Mumble doesn't offer something like that then it's going to be a potential problem with (hopefully) so much traffic. I'd say we
definitely need "separation" between the different ATCs.