VATSIM - Cross the Pond

Peter Schindler · Mar 22, 2012

[imgr]http://www.air-child.com/files/pix/ctp.png[/imgr]

On Saturday, March 31, VATSIM pilots - and hopefully some Air-Children - will fly westwards across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to Northern America. It's called Cross the Pond and it's fun. But it's also almost sold out ...

At the time of writing there's only 18 flights left, mostly from Krakow, Poland to 3 of the overseas destinations listed below. So, if you like to join, hurry and make your booking on

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

Europe departures:
- Krakow
- Hamburg (full)
- Vienna (full)
- Birmingham
- Glasgow (full)

US/Canada destinations:
- Toronto
- Atlanta
- Chicago O'Hare
- Boston (full)

Note1: If you only fly out of a departure airport OR into an arrival airport from the above list, you do not need a booking.

Note 2: ACH callsigns are not possible since only real airline callsigns are allowed. :roll:

:fly:

Szymon Kurzacz · Mar 23, 2012

Two notices:
1. I have only europe scenery installed currently (that means, rest of the world is ocean)
2. You can always participate in such events without booking, just fly as usual, and controllers will have to find some space for your airplane... Anyway for Cross the pond is easier, because for airport located events You may end in quite long holding... Even few hours long (remember that new year on madeira with average 3h holdings?)

Booking makes event more suitable and less time consuming for pilot (booked flights may have priority over notbooked).

So.. I'll not fly this time such thing... But i'm preping to open my season after 9 months of pause.

Oliver Pohl · Mar 24, 2012

Note 2: ACH callsigns are not possible since only real airline callsigns are allowed.

Hallo Peter, where is that written on their page? I can remember, that the LHA Pilots are flying with their Callsigne as well as the GEW-Pilots will do.

Christian Neumann · Mar 24, 2012

2. You can always participate in such events without booking, just fly as usual, and controllers will have to find some space for your airplane...

Hi,
I'm a little bit included in the preparation of loww for this event, and I can tell you: LOWW will not accept "flying without booking" and, my personal point of view, you should not try it, allthough you want to give stress to the controlling guys. They'll have more traffic then ever and try to give all parties involved a great service.
Regards

Szymon Kurzacz · Mar 25, 2012

If i fly online i have one small rule...

If its not in notams or official documents (like FIR restrictions) - it does not matter. I dont have to know each and every event everywhere on my route, but i should be prepared for holdings, bad weather, high traffic and any other usual things in flying. All flights are booked via sending flightplan, and all of them are usualy longer than 60 minutes of flight from takeoff to landing - controller have plenty of time to plan traffic around my arrival (if interested)...

On other hand with my not too powerfull computer i try to avoid events because of lag during them - i can manage few aircrafts, but not more than lets say 10 in same time. And last of things is my free time limited to around 9pm cet on evenings, so if i fly i plan to land, taxi and turn off before 9pm cet, and that usualy means that i'm already on ground in moment of event begining.

Peter Schindler · Mar 25, 2012

Oliver Pohl said:
Note 2: ACH callsigns are not possible since only real airline callsigns are allowed.

Click to expand...

Hallo Peter, where is that written on their page? I can remember, that the LHA Pilots are flying with their Callsigne as well as the GEW-Pilots will do.

I took this from the FAQ page:
Please note: this database utilizes real world codes only. We will NOT be changing the callsign to accommodate a VA
Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe it only tells you that the bookings are based on rw callsigns and you can have a different callsign from delivery, later. Would be great if some of the experienced CTP flyers could set this straight.

LOWW will not accept "flying without booking" and, my personal point of view, you should not try it, allthough you want to give stress to the controlling guys. They'll have more traffic then ever and try to give all parties involved a great service.

Agreed, especially for departure airports. Without a booking it's certainly not a good idea to depart from one of the 5 official airports.
For destination it should be a little different. Experience shows that about 20 to 30% of booked flights are not finished because of disconnects, blue screens or other mishaps. So the arrival controllers should have slightly less workload and be able to squeeze you in.

Svilen Vassilev · Mar 27, 2012

Peter Schindler said:
..........
Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe it only tells you that the bookings are based on rw callsigns and you can have a different callsign from delivery, later. Would be great if some of the experienced CTP flyers could set this straight.
.............

From my past limited experience (after flying 2 CTPs, the last one with ACH callsign) there is no problem or imposed limitation of using any callsign for the booking and during the event itself.

There's merely a minor technical nuance that callsigns, used in the real world, are automatically interpreted by the CTP website scripts and displayed with the proper airilne name: for example if you book DAL1234 or BAW6789 callsigns, they will correctly be interpreted and displayed on their website as belonging to Delta Airlines and British Airways respectively. If you however book an ACH callsign it will not be intepreted as Air-Child as it does not correspond to a real world airline; so it will be displayed simply as ACH. Once again it's a mere visualization technicality, referring to the CTP website and booking system, it does not even affect the ATC during the event, as ATC clients used their own callsign databases, and ACH is correctly included there (at least in Euroscope).

So book your ACH flights and have no fear!

Peter Schindler · Mar 28, 2012

Svilen Vassilev said:
there is no problem or imposed limitation of using any callsign for the booking and during the event itself.

Thanks for the clarification, Svilen!

If you however book an ACH callsign it will not be intepreted as Air-Child as it does not correspond to a real world airline

I think we can live with that

ATC clients used their own callsign databases, and ACH is correctly included there (at least in Euroscope)

does that mean that the controller knows to call us "Airchild" by seeing the ACH prefix?

Svilen Vassilev · Mar 28, 2012

Peter Schindler said:
....
does that mean that the controller knows to call us "Airchild" by seeing the ACH prefix?

Yes indeed, most of them do know or at least should know

There are 2 ATC clients commonly used om Vatsim: VRC and Euroscope, and both utilize update-able databases for the changing data like waypoints, airways, airspace boundaries and so on, including a database that correlates callsign prefixes with airline (and VA) names. There are multiple versions of these databases in circulation, some outdated, some new and current and for controllers who care to keep their clients up-to-date the ACH callsign will be correctly interpreted. Additionally ATC clients allow the controller to manually add a previously unknown callsign to their database, so even if a controller was not aware of a particular callsign they can add it manually for future reference after hearing it on the frequency or seeing it in the flight plan remarks.

Peter Schindler · Mar 28, 2012

Thanks a lot for the interesting insight into a (for me) unknown world

And I think it's also interesting for other online flyers who only know the pilot's side of life. As a spontaneous idea I thought it would be great for people like me to learn more about the other side. Are there any web pages (on Vatsim or elsewhere) that describe the work of online controllers a little in detail?
I don't want to venture in a new career (should stick to my webmaster job and maybe do some flights, for a change), but I'd really like to better understand ATC's job.

Christian Neumann · Mar 29, 2012

Hi Peter,
why don'tt you contact one of our VACC-Austria guys like
Martin Tiefenbacher
Chris Wirowsky
Dietmar Schoklitsch or
Yoram Bernary?

They will shure give you an idea, what ATC is all about.
Regards

Peter Schindler · Mar 30, 2012

Christian Neumann said:
They will shure give you an idea, what ATC is all about.

That's true, Christian. But I don't want someone to write a detailed "job description" just for me. What I'm rather looking for is something that already exists on the net. Perhaps with screenshots of Euroscope and stuff. Something that you can read in small doses, in the evening. Something that might help to fall asleep ... ^^ (just kidding).
I'm sure this must exist somewhere - probably on Vatsim's site. I'm just too lazy to search

Christian Neumann · Mar 30, 2012

looking on the other side

Hi Peter,
if you are registered at vatsim, you can download here a euroscope client,
http://vacc-austria.org/?page=content/s ... FTWARE_ATC

just login as for example PS_OBS, then you can listen to every freq, you want to.
Additionally a contact in the teamspeak with one of the guys, i named you already, and you will get a perfect picture.
Regards

Svilen Vassilev · Apr 14, 2012

Peter Schindler said:
..... I don't want someone to write a detailed "job description" just for me. What I'm rather looking for is something that already exists on the net. ...

It's been a while since I looked at this topic, and sorry for the delay. I would say there are 2 aspects to online ATC: the technical aspect of how it looks and feels through the client interface and the theoretical/procedural aspect of what the controller's job and tasks are.

Regarding the technical aspect: Euroscope is the most advance client currently utilized on vatsim and it has a rather good manual/wiki, including some screeenshots as well: http://www.euroscope.hu/mediawiki

Regarding the theory and procedures, the primary and mandatory source of information for European ATCos on Vatsim is the

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

You can look and read through all the menu sections there, most importantly the Guide and the Manual.

This is the most important, basic information, the foundation. Local vACCs add their own particularities on top of that: local procedures, specific local phraseology, etc. For example here are some local-specific

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

Hope this helps!

Peter Schindler · Apr 15, 2012

Thank you, Svilen! Very much appreciated