Free Flight, Free Speech

I am pleased to announce a group event from San Francsico to Denver, and pilots are now being recruited! The event will begin at Friday, December 23 at 22:00 UTC. The primary coordinator is Intl, with help from lex24, latam, Tank, Michat, T-URBO, D-07007, and myself.

This is an experimental event; we are hoping to provide further events based on feedback from the initial event. Future events may not have the same conditions for this one.

Full details are available at Intl's website at http://julienlengele.fr/flight/flightgear_special_event , however, here are a few of the most significant details:

• The group flight will be limited to a fixed number of pilots who must pre-register, 15 is our maximum. While we of course can't stop people flying with us, we would ask others to be willing to respect the group flight airspace.
• For the first event, aircraft will be limited to a fixed list of airliners which are provided as part of the registration form.
• Pilots participating are expected to know how to control their planes and how to work under ATC direction, including startup, pushback, taxi, takeoff, and landing. Participants will be given an expected takeoff time. Prior to this you will be expected to file clearance/startup/pushback/taxi and be ready to takeoff at the appointed time.
• To avoid version conflict, aircraft will be provided for download. Customized planes will not be acceptable for the first event.
• Mumble use is expected.
• During your takeoff and landing phases, pilots will be expected to change frequencies to a different Mumble channel. That channel will be "sterile" - only flight control communications. Friendly chat during the flight phase is encouraged in the in-flight channel.

We are still in the process of coming up with a nice name for the event and the series. We are expecting to create a poll for group names. A link will be forthcoming; PMs for candidate names may be sent to me in the meantime.

Thanks for reading! We hope you'll consider joining us!

sounds cool

1. Too restrictive for me
2. that date is a working day for me.

so

I can't attend :S

Have fun guys

IH-COL

Thanks!

In planning the event we recognized that this is not an event that will appeal to everybody. And because we do have some conditions that are more restrictive than most open Flightgear events we wanted to put those conditions out there so people can consider those conditions in deciding in they want to sign up. (And I forgot to mention we expect the people to sign up since we're restricting max number of participants. )

And yep, it is a work day for many. This is as much experiment to find out if there's interest in more structured group flying, and what might be needed to make that work. I'm lucky... I have Friday afternoon off.

22:00Z is 3am. Sorry, I can't come.

As stated in the World's Hardest App, I'm busy that day + it's too late (24 local time) so it's a no for me.
Regards, Mav

Thanks for the interest!

I'll pass it around that the time (and day) wasn't all that friendly to some. Intl wanted to make the first trial roll while he was still on vacation, and this was about the only time that seemed to work for all the primary contributors. It does appear in retrospect to be very western-hemisphere centric and then only for those who get the Friday off.

On behalf of the organizers we thank all the participants for trying our experiment! Somewhere around a dozen of us went from KSFO to KDEN using heavier airliners. We did experience one mass crash bug, though we were spread out over several servers, but only one. I personally experienced a repeatable crash crossing one particular point at KSFO as did somebody else, so I wound up taking off from KOAK. One of three controllers had to drop out due to technical problems.

Despite these problems, about a dozen of us (more or less) did fly enroute with air traffic controllers operating the whole distance. It was a very enjoyable flight and experience.

Although I didn't get any photos (thanks to my issues,) participant VladFlyer both livestreamed the flight and will be making video[s] through his YouTube channel - someone else will have to find the link for it.

We consider our flight a success and are beginning planning for the next event, and will be taking into account feedback received from the pilots (and others.)

I was yesterday too busy and I am not that good at controlled flying anyway. But here is a thought about crashes: I would like to gather more data about how and where those crashes occur. So, shall we open a new thread for crash-reports, just to gather some more information? And would crashed people, especially from events with more aircrafts, leave there some crash-reports?

KB7 wrote:and will be taking into account feedback received from the pilots (and others.)

Giving feedback as an "other", i do not understand why people need to be signed up. For me that is not working out. I do not know in advance when i am home or out. So when i am home, i would like to participate in such event. But then it is too late, because i did not sign up.

Yes i saw that about max participants. But what logic is behind that?

Kind regards, Vincent

jwocky wrote:I was yesterday too busy and I am not that good at controlled flying anyway. But here is a thought about crashes: I would like to gather more data about how and where those crashes occur. So, shall we open a new thread for crash-reports, just to gather some more information? And would crashed people, especially from events with more aircrafts, leave there some crash-reports?

I think crash reporting would be a good thing and maybe lead us to operational procedures and/or clues to what not to do whether the devs fix things or not. (Assuming we can narrow down to things like, "Hey, don't throw out xxxx waypoint after a yyyyy waypoint in route manager because we'll crash then." Or, "Hey don't make thus-and-such xml spec in our plane development because that will inevitably lead to a crash for Lesbof." Or, "Hey is for horses KB7, can't you get your upbringing out of your typed diction?" )