A not so brief "good bye"...

[Peter Mueller]

Dear fellow virtual aviators,
Dear staff of Air-Child,

I quarreled quite some time with myself: should I write this, or not. Then I realized, to not write anything, is to actually “don’t give a damn” – I still do, somehow. So, here it is:

I joined ACH on the 4th of January 2014. Now – almost three years later – I am wondering, what changed so much, that I am actually thinking of leaving “my” beloved VA. I took a glance at the statistics – less and lesser flights. I took a look into the forum – few and fewer exchange. And I looked towards the people behind this VA... but nothing. The reasons for me being a member here were plentiful: the idea of helping children in need while pursuing a very dear hobby still sounds breathtakingly awesome. Then I got to know the community: people sharing my passion for aviation from all over the world. What more can one ask? So Air-Child became the first VA I EVER flew for.

Now the hard part: all these good reasons may still be there… but for me it became increasingly harder to see them. Along the way I became so frustrated about “my” VA standing still, that I started looking for other VAs. They all have great communities, they all have their own liveries, routes, ACARS and what not. But no… they’re not ACH. None of them is. None of them was close to what ACH was to me, when I joined.

It’s almost 2017. I am still flying. But these past few days I refrained from using the ACH Acars uplink. What for, I asked myself. And what for, I ask you. YOU the people behind ACH. Forgive me for the following allegations, but you choked this community. You choked it by your inability to act, to foster, to let this ACH flourish. Time is an issue – for all of us. But it was YOUR responsibility to lend a hand and give the damn, I am not giving anymore. Look at our statistics. Look at all the hands that were offered to help you. How many people wanted to support you!

And look at our VA now. People set their acars, populate the interactive map. But the statistics don’t lie. Gradually this community withered away – next to no real community interaction anymore. No new ideas. Not even the one big reason, that drew so many users here, seems to be valid anymore. What was for many a motivator is now a reason for frustration: where are the statistics on how much we collected for charity? What is being done to acquire new sponsors? And above all, WHERE ARE YOU, the people that own this VA? And do you still care for any of this?

Today I am sad to admit: I still have my user account, I have a rank, many hours… but I am not a member of the VA anymore and frankly… I haven’t been for quite some time.



ACH1496 out.

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

Hi Peter, sorry you feel this way.

I took a glance at the statistics – less and lesser flights. I took a look into the forum – few and fewer exchange.

Yes, it's a bit quiet. For the forum I have part of the answer for you: a main contributor to this forum(Tom) is away for a while because he is too busy with work. I also noticed that ACH has a lot of silent pilots; they just fly and you never hear from them.

the idea of helping children in need while pursuing a very dear hobby still sounds breathtakingly awesome.

This still stands.

people sharing my passion for aviation from all over the world.

I'm still here to share this passion. :hi:

Air-Child became the first VA I EVER flew for.

It was mine too. But I don't think I'll fit into any other VA; the quietness is also part of the appeal for me. So, if ACH would cease to exist I would probably continue flying off-line. Maybe do a FSCloud flight once in a while.

But no… they’re not ACH. None of them is.

That's true, we're something special. Most other VA's that don't simulate real airlines are actually flying clubs that use smaller airplanes for bush flying etc. I can't name any other charity VA, actually.

YOU the people behind ACH. Forgive me for the following allegations, but you choked this community. You choked it by your inability to act, to foster, to let this ACH flourish. Time is an issue – for all of us. But it was YOUR responsibility to lend a hand and give the damn, I am not giving anymore. Look at our statistics. Look at all the hands that were offered to help you. How many people wanted to support you!

Well, I can only speak for myself here. I also offered a hand but I also have to be honest: I could never take the responsibility of a large maintenance or financial part of this site on my shoulders and I think many of us can't. So I'm grateful the site still runs relatively well and was upgraded with P3D lately.

where are the statistics on how much we collected for charity? What is being done to acquire new sponsors?

I have to agree with you here, it's a bit lacking. This is also the reason I proposed dynamic ranks: so pilots would fly again to maintain their ranks. I also think a big wish that a lot of us had never came true: a virtual financial system.

Today I am sad to admit: I still have my user account, I have a rank, many hours… but I am not a member of the VA anymore and frankly… I haven’t been for quite some time.

Sad to see you go, but as I'm not "staff" I can't change any of the bigger issues you mentioned. Of course you can't blame ordinary members to be a bit quiet as long as they abide by the rules.

 

[Anders Kvamme Stemland]

I have tried to email Peter about it but never got any response.
I want to recreate the sponsor but any idea how to do it?

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

I see you had a response from Norbert already in the other topic.

It would be good to have some new stuff in there. Like X-Plane and P3D things. That would make us a lot more modern.

 

[Jesco Freund]

I can very well understand what Peter wrote above - It's damn hard to support ACH, as you simply harvest silence or ignorance from the staff. Sure, technically the stuff (still*) works, but any improvement, any help offered or anything done as a community engagement. And Tom being away from here shouldn't be an excuse - it's a shame you cannot get in touch with the rest of the staff through the only means provided to the ACH community, and that would be this BB.


*let's see if xacars will support XP11 - if not, I'll be out as well.

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

And Tom being away from here shouldn't be an excuse

It's not an excuse. I don't have to make excuses on behalf of the "staff". It's just part of an explanation why the forum is so silent. If I remember correctly, Tom is a forum moderator.

it's a shame you cannot get in touch with the rest of the staff through the only means provided to the ACH community, and that would be this BB.

It's actually time Peter Schindler should update us about the current situation with ACH. I know he and other "staff"are having a hard time keeping ACH running but I think they should do the talking themselves.

it's a shame you cannot get in touch with the rest of the staff through the only means provided to the ACH community, and that would be this BB

I agree, that's not good enough for a living VA.

let's see if xacars will support XP11 - if not, I'll be out as well.

Hm, that's mainly a thing between XAcars and XP. I've been experimenting a bit with XAcars myself. I've made a test website with Cgicc that can receive XAcars reports. And I noticed you can change all sorts of things after you've received the report. But you can't change the way XAcars files the reports. That's just part of the XAcars application. You could of course make an application that emulates XAcars by sending reports with the same protocol(it's a simple delimited text message). But that's beyond the scope of a VA.

So my question would be: is there a new standard Xp ACARS application? If there really is one than we should really support that to keep XP pilots aboard. We might have a look at Flightgear too. I'm sometimes considering making a XAcars compatible ACARS for it but FG is still so much in development(and a bit too heavy to run on weaker systems).

 

[Jesco Freund]

And Tom being away from here shouldn't be an excuse

It's not an excuse. I don't have to make excuses on behalf of the "staff". It's just part of an explanation why the forum is so silent. If I remember correctly, Tom is a forum moderator.

Hi Barthe, this was not directed at you, merely a notice that no-one from the staff other than Tom ever shows up here - and as we all know too well, if it comes only down to one person doing something, it will not work the moment this very person gets other priorities or cannot be available for whatever reason. And when talking about "staff", I'm referring to people having access to the ACH backend, being able to change stuff (routes, aircrafts, ...) - so the ones finally setting the course for ACH.

let's see if xacars will support XP11 - if not, I'll be out as well.

Hm, that's mainly a thing between XAcars and XP [...]
So my question would be: is there a new standard Xp ACARS application? If there really is one than we should really support that to keep XP pilots aboard.

Well, there is not, and XACARS development has mostly come to a stop. One year ago, Marko announced he would work on XACARS 3, but no news since then. XACARS has quite some track record for not working even after minor XP updates. On one of those occasions, our own

You do not have permission to view link please Log in or Register

created a drop-in replacement called Xpassenger. Development however was dropped soon after, and it stopped working with recent XP10 versions.

Due to the story on ACARS availability for XP, other VAs supporting X-Plane have resorted to building their own ACARS scripts (as in X-Plane, you can easily put something together either in Python or Lua). In case XACARS does not work with XP11 (which I'm about to test), I could imagine writing an ACARS client in Python for ACH - but I would only tackle this if there's some need other than mine, and if I can get in touch with the ACH staff to align on the interface.

//EDIT//
P. S. I just completed a flight on XP11 (beta) with XACARS. So far it worked (flight got tracked and recorded) - that's giving some hope...

 

[Andrew Williams]

Hi Barthe, this was not directed at you, merely a notice that no-one from the staff other than Tom ever shows up here - and as we all know too well, if it comes only down to one person doing something, it will not work the moment this very person gets other priorities or cannot be available for whatever reason. And when talking about "staff", I'm referring to people having access to the ACH backend, being able to change stuff (routes, aircrafts, ...) - so the ones finally setting the course for ACH.

Evening gents
Well it has been a long time since I have logged in here.

Personally, I gave up once Peter stopped responding to my emails (a long time ago). I wasn't going to do all of the 'work' here, when I was just a 'helper'. So I logged out, only to have a quick look at the forums every now and then.

Not even sure if I still have access to backend, I doubt it.