Hi All,
I invite you to share your experience with the Festival UK+Ireland 2016 below
I will begin:
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The Good
I am very happy to recognize that the festival is in my opinion the most interesting MP event in FG World to this date. On one hand, it is the largest event, which counts with the most massive participation of pilots, and tower controllers, in a localized region. It is also the longest in duration: 48 continuous hours. At any single time during those 48 h you can see pilots cruising, and eyes looking on the mpmap viewers.
There are certainly some peak hours. Specifically The afternoon (18-24 UTC each days). When the times for European and american side players better coincide. Although Saturday trends to be busier, the last 2 hours of the festival shows a new influx of pilots willing to wave good bye to the festival for a following of six months.
Pilots are, generally, very capable and willing to make a merry festival for everyone. I found a bit more trolling interest during Japan Festival in Spring. On UK festival. At least in the times I frequented, I did not notice anyone focused on trolling, and you can see a few pilots with less experience and thus doing some runway incursions, or unsure of how to do a runway backtrack. But they all behave calm and procceed with their best intentions.
All pilots I've got to see this Festival were, in one word, kind, professional, and honestly interested in doing their best performance, within the limitation of their own skills.
The ATCs.
The festival in UK+Ireland draw outstanding interest from the eye=holders point of view.
In previous instances, we counted with maybe 4 people interested in ATC, sometimes less, and thus, less positions remained open. This time, a longer list of volunteers indicated their interest to participate on towers. For coordination purposes this meant, off course, a much longer period for settling and discussing which positions everyone wanted to cover. Also, --and given UK airspaces are rather intriguing : see IVAO UK --, the larger number of ATC avaible implied a much longer study of airspaces to determine proper boundaries and best hand-off proccedures. When is a pilot in my area? when is he not? A question that took much planning this time.
But clearly, it all came down positive, for both the pilot experience and the ATC comfort. During sometimes on the afternoon of Saturday, Pilots enjoyed multiple hand-off in a London<->Edinburgh route, passing over Edinburgh (Talla) Birmingham (Daventry), Manchester (Stafa) and London centers.
I appreciate the efforts of every ATC participating. Not only because it allowed a very entertaining and comprehensive coverage of the complex UK airspaces, but also because everyone of you kept high levels of performance, friendliness and if-I-may-say, Professionalism. As far as I know, no pilot, regardless of their level of experience and skills was left feeling outcasted.
I will take a minute for specific recognition (from my personal experience) :
*Raven: Jumping late on this train, but rapidly getting informed of the festival's specifics, and offered the positions for Manchester at times much harder for European/American controllers. Thus keeping the festival alive for the extended hours. (he is located in SouthEast Asia). I always had wished the festival sparked more interest on these locations so it keeps active and strong regardless of regional time zones for extended times.
*ATCJay: Keeping London Alive from Standstet. I personally visited his service from Manchester(Raven) and I was extremely pleased at the ATC service in both ends.
* Oskar: Thanks for taking care of Manchester for the European/American time zones. Manchester became the location, this festival, with longer hours. I did have the pleasure to have the direct hand-off with him. And I appreciated the smoothness for this transition. Oskar, in spite of his youth, had been very calm and precise.
* ATC411: You did great. Period. Personally, I received multiple mentions that your service was really outstanding. And you were also a big festival magnet. Lots of traffic kept strong to Dublin. It's funny, because at a given moment --close to beginning of the festival-- I feared for all Ireland. Both Northern and Ireland services were last minute cancelled, and the name *UK+Ireland* rapidly became not sense. But you agreed leaving Talla to me, and relocate to Dublin, and you had barely 1 week to prepare for airspaces, and plan your position. And did with a level of 5 stars. I pressume, for what I saw on the maps, you had the busiest location on this festival, frequently receiving traffic from both London and Edinburgh centers, creating quite an interesting triangle. You also received pilots coming from the trans-atlantic, and continental traffic in Concorde coming From Jomo on the final hours. Quite an interesting marathon you had there
The Mini-Events
This time I was aware of two mini-events. The Road Rage in Isle of Mann with Lesbof, and the "Abottsinch to Llanbedr" fly-by.
I saw a couple of pilots road raging in Isle of Mann. Guy, and lesbof did completed some circuits.
The FGUK home base visit was really nicely participated. At a certain moment it seemed the whole UK traffic had conspired to land in the now-a-days abandoned/closed airport EGOD, and some of us, with the scenery installed, found the amazing FGUK scenery, with animated and pretty hangars. The participating, again was amazing: we got a lot of interesting non-military aircraft coming down here: Such as the Jumbolino (JWocky), the DC6B (Side), a Do328 (D-ECHO), and a passenger's 777 (KL666). On the military side we've got The RAF Super King Air350 (IH-COL), The Janet 736 (AF574), a KC137 Boeing 707 Special edition (Catalanoic), a Mustang P51d (Onox --shooting fire to everyone??) and a Bleriot XI from the WWI themes (Lesbof). This mini-event, in my opinion was a Max-Blast!
The Red Flag
48 hours of military exercises went on in North Scotland. Sometimes they approached Edinburgh Scene from the North, but always remained on Military Airspaces without incursion in the Civilian zones. I don't know of a summary of events yet, but certainly they had amazing time practicing all kind of Military situations up there. And it looked amazingly active all the time. The Red Flag Operation is certainly a very interesting community with the FG ecosystem. Thanks guys!!
The Bad
In contrast with the Good above. There is not much to mention in "the bad". But I do have a couple mentions, thou:
1. The sick. I wish prompt recoveries to 2 participants that had to bow out earlier or be present for reduced amount of times due to un-planned/last minute health issues. We missed you, and we kept you present wishing you full and prompt recovery
2. The community split. Organizing this festival with the current community split is a bit of a hazzle that we suffered for a whole one year now. We succeeded finding ways around it, but having to coordinate, and inform about this event on two separate forums causes unnecessary resentments. I appreciate the efforts of OPFOR77 for spiking up the interest about the festival on Curtis' Forum. On this direction, I would like to see someone stepping in to fill the gap and keep the rest of the community informed and engaged.
Once KL666 mentioned a very good approach. We can use thejabberwocky forum for planning and coordination purposes. Specially since I like collaborating in that part of the efforts and I am limited to my ability to participate on Curtis' controlled zones. But Information and communication could be kept by making "general announcements" of what is decided on Curtis with some better frequency as to maintain the interest.
The festival participation is outstanding, but I still fear that it has been hurt on the trenches of "their event-not ours" territorial behavior. And with the realities of our community we have to live with, we can improve on that front. Honestly.
The Ugly
I only have to mention in this line, that in my opinion the FGUK takes "The Ugly" line. Not only because the inability to integrate from the venerable 3rd party hangar, but also for the rudeness they treated members of their own team for making an effort to bridge gaps. I dare to say the big leaders there, specifically StuartC and Voodoo that they must remember their FGUKers are PEOPLE. And thus, they expect not only respect and comradery, but also friendship, and understanding.
I wish your events long life, and hopefully clean unoccupied airspaces where you can fly comfortably without the need to feel you must resort to Territorialistic behaviors, such as the one shown by Warty harrasing with a Sukoi to LATAM-1 while completing a Dubling-Manchester flight on a B773.
You guys were not disappointing thou. that I admit.
Best to all,
IH-COL
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