Registration of new members

Peter Schindler · Apr 16, 2015

This info has been up on the homepage for a short while after we switched servers, but there wasn't any info in the forum, so here's a sticky for whom it may concern:

Registration for new members has been suspended for now. This is a temporary situation but we also can not give you a precise date of when it will be open again.
Some background info: After we switched our web server to a new ISP, end of February, we made a few adjustments to the coding, mainly to assure compatibility with newer PHP and stricter rules of the new system. This also included a change of character encoding for the main website - from ISO (latin1) character set to the universal UTF8. UTF is the encoding used by the forum software (phpBB), although this wasn't the case when we started the site in 2008. But from the time phpBB was running on UTF there was always the problem with colliding special characters - mainly because we don't use phpBB's own registration procedure but replaced it with our own, instead, so that members are automatically registered for the forum when they sign up for the VA. We included workarounds for that on the old server and now most of that code has to be rewritten, otherwise we would only work around the workarounds and end up with a mess ....

It was also quite convenient to not have any new members directly after the server switch, only to confuse them with bugs and glitches. So we killed two birds with one stone. Most things have been fixed by now, but still not all. Getting there...

In short: we still need some more time to adjust the website code before we're going to reopen the registration. Hopefully this will be around end of April, beginning of May. Please stand by until further notice.

:thx:

ACH1516 · May 9, 2015

Any news?

Peter Mueller · Jun 20, 2015

Is a lonesome death upon us...?

...granted... the subject is quite a bit provocative, but we as a community, proprietors and members of air-child must ask ourselves where we want to go. I know, that there are technical difficulties when migrating a whole server - let alone one with a living, breathing VA on it. But the past few month w/o new members, a change of the technical situation or new information on how things are progressing has me quite concerned. We are missing out on "hoardes" of new members - with every new scenery released and every new aircraft brought forward by publishers.

If things are progressing slow or not at all, it is as it is. At least - for the sake of transparency - let us know what's what. And think about laying out the problems that still persists. This community has very capable members and I for one would be more than willing to help whereever I can - to get things in gear and acquire new members.

As I started ranting about this, I might aswell add another issue, that has been bothering mefor quite some while now: people (including me) have asked for an update on the charter/schedule A/C hangars. The issue with that was, that each and every A/C has certain performance data and this data needs to be linked to routes. As this is very work intense and since the navigantional data changes with every cycle, which would require an update for some of the routes, we could divert to simply having the A/C in the hangar and let the captains do their calcualting. I've read some posts in the past, where people stated, that they calculate their routes for themselves. I'm one of them. I use things like simbrief etc. to do that - for each and every flight.

I would prefer having the real set of A/C available than having a pre-calculated route that I would've to verify anyways to make sure that the correct route data is in my FMS too. The optional "substitution" is a very good thing - it shows the flexibility in this VA. Still I am missing the depiction of the current add-on market when it comes to A/C in the air-child hangars. At least add the mainstream stuff to it. Like all the Airbuses out there, the different Boeing 737s etc., the Dash-8 and whatnot

Again - I'm more than ready to support y'all if you need to outsource db maintenance or any other thing that needs fixing.

Finally I'd ask you to not keep us in the dark. Give some feedback on how things are progressing or - if they're not - what to expect. We all have a "real life" and we all do understand if things don't go as fast, as they should. That's life, and that's ok. But please don't keep us in the dark.

In my ine of work they say: "If there is one customer openly voicing a concern, there are at least a dozen more that didn't come forward with that. And these are the ones we loose."

With best regards,

Peter

Barthe Hogenboom · Jun 20, 2015

But the past few month w/o new members, a change of the technical situation or new information on how things are progressing has me quite concerned. We are missing out on "hoardes" of new members - with every new scenery released and every new aircraft brought forward by publishers.

Yes, I'm also a bit worried. If we can't get new members people might think our VA is slowly passing away...But on the other hand I can understand Peter(the programmer) and others have busy lives.

we could divert to simply having the A/C in the hangar and let the captains do their calcualting

I also do my own calculating. But if we made it all DIY we might lose a part of our accessibility; pilots who are still learning to calculate might be put off by it. We might also lose some value; what's the use of a VA if you have to fill everything with your own imagination? Most real airlines offer guidance to their pilots concerning routes.

Again - I'm more than ready to support y'all if you need to outsource db maintenance or any other thing that needs fixing.

It might help, it might also make things more complex because the one has to know what the other is/was doing. I know a thing or 2 about IT projects and working together is not easy.

the different Boeing 737s

What 737 is missing? We don't have a 737-600 but not many mainstream airlines have them. We don't have a 737-900 but the difference with the 800 isn't that great. Some real airlines are solely built around 737-800s. The MAX isn't available in real life yet. The rest is old and obsolete.

Finally I'd ask you to not keep us in the dark. Give some feedback on how things are progressing or - if they're not - what to expect.

Yeah, it might be time for a little update. Last thing I heard was that Tom couldn't reach Peter at all.

Tom Weber · Jun 20, 2015

Meanwhile I had a chat with Peter about the missing plane problem. He told me that he has no idea why this happens. Before there was a problem with planes which have not been flight to the airport they are booked for. If they have brought to another airport they have been not available in the dispatch center but this problem occurred only for the scheduled flights, not for charter. Peter also is digging in the dark.

About the new member problem we did not talk. But you are right we have to talk about it. But me, I have really no time in he moment to go deeper to the problems cause I am in the middle of a postproduction of a cinema movie and this goes on till October 2015. From time to time I find a bit time to write to the forum or to change the front site, but really not more. And I myself cannot do anything concerning a database problem.
Cheers Tom

Barthe Hogenboom · Aug 9, 2015

Wait...I can't believe my eyes...

I see 2 new members. That means A. the member registration system is working again or B. They have been added manually or C. Some people are so good at hacking they can become members without a registration system. :lol:

Anyway, welcome new members, I'm glad we're on the right track again. I hope those mysterious missing planes will return too...

Tom Weber · Aug 9, 2015

Barthe Hogenboom said:
Wait...I can't believe my eyes... I see 2 new members. That means A. the member registration system is working again or B. They have been added manually or C. Some people are so good at hacking they can become members without a registration system. :lol:

Anyway, welcome new members, I'm glad we're on the right track again. I hope those mysterious missing planes will return too...

About the ghost planes I cannot tell you anything - about the registration I know that Peter solved the registration problem he had on the new server. So new pilots are welcome again.
Cheers Tom

Peter Mueller · Aug 9, 2015

:clap: :clap: :clap: :goodjob: :thx: :clap: :clap:

THIS is wonderful news! I just saw two new members and I had to check this topic immediatly. VERY WELL DONE!

I raise my glass (just water... I have to fly later on

) to ye, Gentlemen!

Peter Schindler · Aug 11, 2015

Sorry, I have to make this short for now, but at least you can see that I'm still alive (well, sort of). The 2 new members you saw had asked for manual registration, and they weren't the first to contact me because of that. So I tried to manually register them but realized (what I already knew) that the process is too tricky (password generation, forum registration, synchronizing IDs between different databases ...) and prone to mistakes. So I made some efforts (finally) to restore the registration forms and scripts and used those 2 as test candidates. So far it looks good - and there's also a third new member who obviously found out how to enter 'registration.php' in the browser - so I just reinstated the "join" link to the main page. We'll see how that's going to go

Aside from that, we (mostly me) owe you a couple answers about how things at Air-Child will go on. For a too long time, neither Norbert nor me had time to care about the VA. So we realized we'll need some new structures and new people to help, which isn't as easy as it may sound. It has to be people we can rely on. The right persons in the right jobs and a safe way to communicate with them. This has to be planned, organized, prepared.... and, in the beginning, it will take a LOT of time ... which we don't have :roll: It's a vicious circle and we are still trying to figure out a decent approach to a decent solution.

Lastly, for now, I will try to look into that "missing aircraft" mystery again. Tom has been talking to me about that a couple times and I had been trying to reproduce it on my side, with no success. So I'm not sure if it happens to everyone or just a certain group, but I'll look into it again and keep you updated.

I will also try to communicate more through the forum and take care of your guys' concerns, but do not expect too much, at the moment. We'll keep you informed whenever things move on. Thank you all for your patience and loyalty until now!

Peter

Barthe Hogenboom · Aug 12, 2015

Hi,

For a too long time, neither Norbert nor me had time to care about the VA.

Normally it's not that important, but in this case I think you mean "look after". (I gather you (still) care about the VA otherwise you wouldn't have programmed the site etc.).

So we realized we'll need some new structures and new people to help, which isn't as easy as it may sound.

I think the best way to find out who's the right person for a certain job is by offering small jobs first and see how they manage.

I could do a thing or 2. I'm better at textual and graphical things than at forum stuff etc.(And I believe you have enough forum moderators already). I could offer to keep the site a bit up to date with recent events(the right side column etc.). I could help with thinking about some technical aspects of the site but I think for the real day to day technical maintenance of the site you need someone who lives close to you so you can easily communicate.

I heard some other people offer their help on the forum. If you want I can read through some topics to find out who they were.

So I'm not sure if it happens to everyone or just a certain group

Tom made a topic to find out who's having the problem. Me and Frank, mainly. But I guess there are some more that we don't know about because there seems to be a large number of quiet hard working pilots that don't talk on the forum much.(Or simply didn't notice the 777-300/200F is gone).

Anders Kvamme Stemland · Aug 20, 2015

Hello.
I can help with forum related stuff if that helps.
and obviously the unicef donation s is not working right now, so maybe I can help there too?

I am sure it is people here willing to help

Tom Weber · Aug 21, 2015

Anders Kvamme Stemland said:
Hello.
I can help with forum related stuff if that helps.
and obviously the unicef donation s is not working right now, so maybe I can help there too?

I am sure it is people here willing to help

Best is a PM or mail to Peter.
Thnx Tom

Registration of new members

ACH1516

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