USA TOUR Event | SAT DECEMBER 17TH 18:00 - 21:00 UTC

[SHM]

Flying in VATSIM doesn't mean you're always on AP. Any SID/STAR can be flown manually. Any Approaches can be done manually......

And you can always tell the ATCs that you would like radar vectors and I've seen them do that. So its not like following the Magenta line all the time.

[jwocky]

The funny thing is, Vincent has me always up for "landing node gear first" (actually, most of the time, it is not nose gear first, it is three-point or very little flare because I come often in with low speeds and I hate tail strikes, a little paranoid about that). But bottom line is ... the worst offender of node fear first landings is admittedly an older guy but he is not even on VATSIM ---> That's me!

So, here is a newsflash for both of you (and Oscar too if he likes):
I do this for fun. I will never be a perfect pilot. I will never be a perfect ATC. And if an ATC with otherwise perfect phraseology talks to me with machine gun speed while Mumble is crackling and sizzling again and five other people yell around, I give a shit, sorry. I re-read what I understood and ask him to repeat the rest before I take any action that endangers my flight by not or misunderstood instructions. Because there is of course one rl aspect of flying, we always forget: If things go bad, as they did in Medellin this week, the ATC can be afterwards drink a coffee and be interviewed by the authorities. The pilot for obvious reasons not. Well, luckily we fly only sims.
So, bottom line: Things happen with pilots and ATCs in sims, far more than in rl. Mumble has a bad day, I sit accidentally on that button in the middle of my headset cable and my mic is off. The ATC is too fast for me or, a problem, we have a lot, a non-native-speaker speaks English to a non-native speaker and sometimes accents lead to misunderstandings. I mean, Israel and me are both not bad at English, but we are both not native speakers. Israel takes the time to speak slow and clear. So, even when he telly me "Charlie-Kilo-Junkie" again,I know, he means me and when I re-read as "Scharlie-Kilo-Yankee" (or just Jay-Wockie) he knows, who talked. And FL-too-sserrooo-sserooo or FL-too-houndreid isn't a problem. But if you would record us and play it back at double speed, you wouldn't understand a freaking thing and neither would I. See, in RL ATCs are also trained to speak some clear to make up for the loss radio transmissions have always.
Sooo, we have a lot of things, that are not rl. Fine, it's a game. Things happen. I will not whack Oscar with a dead fish when he, in the most correct phraseology possible and a speech speed of north than 100kbit/s throws instructions at me again (you did that in one of the past festivals, I think it was the Geneva one and I was like "huh? duuuh!"). So, relax a little and try to think a little bit more about what is going on here, on a very basic level. The different personalities, the different approaches, the different language problems. Basically, you may have to learn all to accept first, that a plane-tinkerer, not a trained pilot is incoming to your airport with 150 metric tons of weight and 100K thrust on his ass and then, you have a lot more motivation to speak clearly. Because you are all so hell-bound to make this "real", that you should want to avoid one thing for sure ... crashing those freaking 150 tons of plane, load and fuel on your airport. The whole thing, in FG as in RL serves one purpose: To bring planes and the people in them savely into the air and back on the ground. Maybe, while you get all riled up about whether it's FL-2-0-0 or FL-200, you should remember that ultimate purpose of the whole thing again?

[KL-666]

I will never be a perfect ATC

Yes you are. You were excellent in the festival in Argentina. When i heard your voice at first i thought: OMG not again such a beginner who puts me at 10.000 ft at 10 mi out and then happily saying: "Cleared to intercept ils". But none of that all happened. I was put nicely at 2000-3000 ft at 10 mi out. I remember that as a very positive experience.

Kind regards, Vincent

[SHM]

That's our jwocky

[IAHM-COL]

JWocky ATCed in the festival!? Oh nice

[jwocky]

I did in the South American one, I was the guy sneaking all those planes into your airspace

Actually, aside of Vincent's nice critique, I got a lot of heat then because I has everyone lined up on the long approach with generous distances but I had only one runway, no good taxiway and had to build a kind of zipper system to get people up and down

[Omega]

For those that don't know me, I have logged over 2000 hours as a VATSIM controller, and the highest rating I've held on the network is senior instructor (I3).

Speaking from experience, the notion that VATSIM is a "professional" network is vastly inaccurate. In fact, I would say that the complete opposite is actually true. VATSIM is an organization that by nature, gives more emphasis to quantity over quality; to political correctness over freedom of speech; and to made-up rules and regulations over realism. And if any VATSIM member tries to propose new ideas, that go against these ideologies, he will be quickly shut down.

It may sound like I'm making all of this up. But this is something that I, and other long-time members have had to deal with on many occasions. Corrupt politics do indeed play a very big role in VATSIM's operations. Don't believe me? Have a look at the VATSIM Code of Regulations: https://www.vatsim.net/sites/default/fi ... p%2016.pdf. This is a 116-page document that new members must agree to upon sign up. The document does not contain much related to ATC or flying, it only talks about membership and the almighty VATSIM Board of Governors. Not to mention that large portions are legal terms written in all caps.

Why do people need to read and agree to such a large document, simply to sign up for a network of VIRTUAL hobbyists? To give a comparison, Apple iOS' terms and conditions is only 10 pages long. And IVAO's rules and regulations is about 12 pages.

And if you didn't know, VATSIM and IVAO started off in the late 90's as a single network, SATCO, which later was split into VATSIM and IVAO due to disagreements between founding members. Since then, there has been a constant race over which network gets to have the most active members. As such, VATSIM has obtained this quantity over quality ideology. Thus allowing pilots to join and fly freely without training at all. While controllers are required to train. This creates a significant double standard, which has been brought up multiple times. However VATSIM's governors deny to do anything about it.

Now especially due to the emergence of FSX:Steam edition and P3D, VATSIM has seen a surge in the number of pilots, as well as incompetence in basic flying and communication skill. It has come to the point where a controller cannot work a busy airspace efficiently without each pilot requiring constant spoon-feeding. Instead of the 116-page legal document, which I doubt anyone reads. VATSIM could instead put in place a simple pilot exam upon sign-up. This would help to at least ensure that members know the basics. But again, the governors refuse to follow up on such proposal.

It is not any better on the controller side either. In fact, many controllers, especially in the US, don't even know basic phraseology, airspace classification or how to properly vector aircraft. Out of over 500 controllers in the US division, I can count on one hand the controllers who actually have a clue. As an instructor, I have always gone out of my way to train new controllers to the highest standards possible, while trying not to hold them back from obtaining their rating. But my efforts have been constantly met by resistance from VATSIM's upper management, they prefer to have controllers trained to subpar standards in order to increase the numbers.

I personally believe that if you are using a flight simulator, your goal should be to simulate flight to the best extent of your abilities. And the same applies to ATC. A controller who uses real phraseology and has a good amount of knowledge, will sound ten times better on the frequency, than a controller who doesn't. Contrary to popular belief, I believe that a controller can talk as fast as he prefers, as long as he is speaking clearly, uses standard phraseology and sounds confident. And of course as long as he is moving traffic around in an orderly and efficient way.

I don't believe ATC is a "customer service" as jomo likes to say. Instead, the ATC-pilot interaction should be a two-way road. In regards to the incident, I personally would ask "are you able to expedite your descent?" before issuing an inefficient 360 (or ICAO: orbit). It actually looks like a simple vector for descent to the south or north would be far better than a 360.

[SHM]

Oh. Didn't know about the politics behind it.

Just out of curiosity, where do you usually control?
I've flown when you've controlled at EHAM in FG, but not in VATSIM. I look forward to fly under your control soon.

The pilot rating exists but is not compulsory as you probably know.
https://www.vatsim.net/pilots/training

I don't fly much in the US because of time zone issues, but I couldn't any find any issues with the ones at Europe and Asia. Maybe other VATSIM pilots here could say more?

[IAHM-COL]

[edit]REDACTED[edit]
IH-COL

[jwocky]

@Omega:

I personally believe that if you are using a flight simulator, your goal should be to simulate flight to the best extent of your abilities.

Aside of that you said that in reference to flying in VATSIM, it applies imo also to FG. So, what is the abilities of the pilot are not adequate to the expectations of the ATC. General grounding the pilot? We can't do that. And well, you personally think, the ATC can talk as fast as we wont, but honestly, some are too fast. I mean, if I get a little loss under this machine gun fire, I can blame that I am no native speaker, but sometimes, I see even native speakers get lost. Sooo, there is a limit as common sense tells us. Especially since it is technically impossible to speak really clear above a certain speed.
On the other hand, I agree with the two way roads, though, not necessarily from a pure aviation point of view. See, I know some people will feel hurt now when I say, this is a game, a hobby. We rely on volunteers. Now please expand that term also on ATCs and pilots. Without people doing anything, the FG world would be simple empty. All we get out of it, all of us, is some fun. We don't get fun out of a conflict lets say between a 3d dev and an FDM dev and we get neither fun out of pilot versus ATC. Basically, we all get fun out of a sense of achievement. The FDM guy when this crate flies and can do crazy things (yes, I have fun being back to tinkering for a bit ), the model guy loves it when his baby looks really really good, the pilot feels good when he made a good landing, the jet fighter feels good when he shot down that other guy (which then gives the other guy a bad feeling though) and the ATC feels good when he ran for hours the perfect organization and got everybody in and out in one piece, got nobody lost on his airport for hours and so on. It's on every level kind of a challenging hobby because we put time into learning things on the fly, people in rl take years to learn. The mazing thing is how often that works out.
What I try to point out is, we all live in kind of symbiosis in FG. That makes it not only a two way road but actually a whole network of bilateral reliances. So, given that kind of complex symbiotic community, we are, some are new, some are veterans, some handle their planes perfect, some not so much, some handle their airports nervous with the zeal of a newbie, others are cool vets in that. But everybody has also good days and not so good days. So, there is a human element involved. Now, I don't do VATSIM, I got more than my share of politics in FG already. We don't need more of that. So, lets alsorepsect this human element and cut each other some slack. You think, an ATC can talk as fast as he wants, but if you have a pilot in approach who obviously has a problem with understanding you, is it necessary to talk as fast as you can? And vice versa, is it necessary for this pilot to fly into controlled area before he even knows where the gear lever is in his plane or what a vector is? We don't need 116 pages of rules about something. This forum has after two years I think still twoposts abpout freedom of speech and about the limits of it, both together maybe 4 pages? If that much. What we need however is some common understanding of how to treat the others.I don't even call for treating everybody nice, but reasonable.
Sooo, a reasonable thing to do for us, not speaking VATSIM here, would be to get us the toughest and most frustration tolerant ATC (or maybe several) and open somewhere, say once a months, an airspace where pilots can focus more on learning how to work with an ATC than on being perfect from the start. As in, I don't mind if you crash a plane, take a broom and clear the debirs up, but listen, listen to the explanations, use the chance to answer questions. Something like that.
And in between, we do the same thing the other way around. A way for inexperienced ATCs to gather experience with the most hardcore pilots we can find. You can mess up a vector, that's okay, no sniding remarks (or not too many ), just explanation and analysis what went wrong, so the ATCF knows next time.
Just such an idea. Because I personally had my ATC moments also. The thing of messing up isn't a one way road either. I had one who send me up and down a taxiway once because he couldn'tmake up his mind where North was. I was accidentally vectored in a mountain once. I had one who stereotype repeated the same standard text in probably wonderful phraseology but didn't react to my repeated response that I can't understand him. And I had one who got really a tantrum because I couldn't read those little taxiway signs. On the other hand I have driven ATCs nutz with very slow approaches, the-other-left, blind taxiing and the occasional color of the runway boo boo ... means, I saw the taxiway first and thought, it was the runway. So, it goes always both ways and it is rarely bad intention. So, a little bit less hadcore aryna about it and a liitle bit more laughing it off would go a longer way than "correct phraseology".