HvACC
is pleased to announce
“Athens Complete”
Fly-in
Sunday, October 19th, 17:00-22:00 Z
| [ Hellenic Virtual ACC "Athens Complete" Fly In ]
|
HvACC |
| [ Basic Idea ] Have you ever listened to flights being handed off from one controller
to the other, whether on departure or on arrival ? Delivery hands off
to Ground, but the flight also contacts the Ramp. Center hands off to
Approach who hands off to Director. Have you ever wanted to have
this complete experience in your online flight ? On October 19th you can,
at the "Athens Complete" HvACC Fly-In. For 5 hours
the HvACC will fully man LGAV Eleutherios Venizelos Airport for you in
Athens and provide you the opportunity of living the pilot's life at an
airport, whether at the beginning or at the end of a flight, or if you
wish at both. ***LGAT Athens Hellinikon Airport is CLOSED for all flights.
LGAV Athens Venizelos Airport is the new airport in use.*** |
| [
Scenarios ]
A. Arrival from abroad to Athens LGAV. Flight then onwards from Athens LGAV without delay (shutdown, refile, startup and go) B. Departure from Athens LGAV to regional airport. Flight
then outbound back to Athens LGAV. |
| [
Ground Operations ]
All pilots should read this section carefully for ground operations: Pilots should try to keep radio transmissions as short as possible. When first contacting a station, wait until nobody is transmitting and the responding station has acknowledged transmission. Then transmit just your callsign and position. Do not pass any further information at this time. If the controller you are calling requires any further information they will ask you to relay your message. A) Arriving Aircraft: Please inform Tower as soon as you have vacated the active runway. Hold
at position you have vacated and contact Venizelos Ground for your taxi
instructions. Please contact Clearance Delivery for your clearance. Once readback is complete you are going to be provided a time check (as we do not all have the same time in the virtual world) and you are going to be asked to contact Ground. At this time you should contact the RAMP. In the real world LGAV there is no RAMP, however this is the best way to simulate the intercom communication with the ground staff. While in contact with the ramp you are going to ask and get push back clearance. Do not expect start-up clearance. You have already been authorized to start-up when your readback was successful. Once ready to taxi you are going to be told to contact Ground. Once with Ground, you are going to receive your taxi instructions. You
should know the rest. |
| [
Flight Planning ]
1. Prepare for your flight plan by using the simple route information we provide. Alternativelly, can use the excellent collection of hundreds of FlightPlans
for Greece grfp03.zip
by Babis Perivolas. They are all converted in the most popular formats
of current Flight Simulator Navigation tools. 2. If you feel comfortable with SIDs & STARs by all means do use
them and include them in the flight plan submitted. Current Hellenic airspace
SID , Enroute, STAR and Approach charts for most major airports can be
downloaded from the HvACC website in the Aeronautical Data Section (Main->Pilot's
Area->Aeronautical Data). |
| [
Event Operations ] Arrange to cross Athens FIR entry points (TIGRA, NOSTO, LATAN, BAMBI, TALAS, MAKED, AMANI, ALKIS etc.) or start flight in Greece, at ~17:00 UTC+ Sunday October 19th 2003. Voice usage with RogerWilco
is highly recommended (all controllers on voice) since it seeds up things.
First execute, then reply. Do not break in on other's ATC message tranceipt.
PLEASE VERIFY THAT YOU HAVE SELECTED "SLOW MODEM" SETTING
TO MINIMIZE PROBLEMS. |
[
Weather Suggestions ]
|
[
General Scenery & Files Needed ]
|
| [ Athens E. Venizelos
LGAV ] General Information The new Athens airport is located 35Km East, South East of Athens Center.
Completed in September 2000, it became operational on 28th of March 2001
replacing the Athens Hellenikon LGAT airport which operated as the main
Athens airport since 1938! The new Athens International Airport honors
the name of Eleftherios Venizelos, one of the greatest Greek politicians
who has offered a lot to Hellas and the nation. The airport is equipped
with two (2) parallel runways 4Km long each, and 1575m apart, allowing
for simultaneous operation of both runways. It's facilities include one
large passenger terminal, a smaller satellite terminal accessible from
the main terminal by underground connection, one large cargo terminal
and plenty of room for expansion in the future. Currently, in this initial
phase, the airport is capable of handling 16 Million passengers per year. Here are some facts from the official Athens Intl Airport site : Able to handle 16 Million Passengers per year in the current phase. Hellas 2001 Project team and especially George Dorkofikis have made sure FS2000 and FS2002 users have an excellent freeware scenery to fly with. While approaching on ILS 03L / 10 DME if you take a look NorthWest (left) you can see the old beloved Hellinikon LGAT at 6 miles resting in peace ! Flight Planning Most frequent Runways : 03L Arrivals / 03R Departures Scenery FS2002 - LGAV and patch by
George Dorkofikis
Real : Final on 03L FS2002 (Approaching stand A13 in LGAV) |
| [ About Greece in
General ] (Aviation simulated & real) There is more to the image of the nice sunny beaches, summer resorts, mediteranean weather and 3500 years of civilisation when you think of flying in Greece. High mountaineous terrain emerging out of the sea, which surrounds the greatest part of this country’s area, mainly form Greece. That leaves little room for land planes that could accommodate regular ILS equipped airports that pilots would approach flying over calm valleys. In the mainland, Peloponissos peninsula to the South and Makedonia to the North of Greece have lots of airports surrounded by steep mountains that require careful attention by the pilot during navigation, approach and departure procedures. Good examples are Athens Elefsis LGEL, Ioannina LGIO, Kastoria LGKA, Kalamata LGKL, Kozani LGKZ, Tripolis LGTP and Sparti LGSP. Usually you get adjacent lakes since these are the only land planes in the area. In the Sea environment things get worse. The Ionian sea to the West and Aegean sea to the East contain dozens of islands which have every reason to accommodate an airport connecting them to the mainland. Some of them are classified as “remote” although you should be able to find nearby diversion fields. A quick look to runway lengths and airport lighting (and hours of operation in real life) will prove that with certain aircraft types and during nighttime lots of options are out of consideration. Strong North winds make approaches quite dangerous since from the open sea you end up approaching a runway near steep rising land formations that are not always favourable to the wind direction. Good examples are Samos LGSM, Kerkyra LGKR, Mikonos LGMK, Santorini LGSR, Mitilini LGMT, Leros LGLR, Ikaria LGIK (where "Icarus" fell in Greek Mythology !), Astypalaia LGPL, Chania LGSA, Iraklion LGIR, Kithira LGKC, Skiros LGSY and Syros LGSO
Since the mountains usually rise very close from the water to high elevations, tiny pieces of land are usually left for airports (and their approach paths). This problem creates one of the most challenging environments for pilots flying with anything from big jets to small props within the Mediterranean region. You talk about hard approaches like Hong Kong Kai Tak or Innsbruck, Sion and Lugano in Europe? Why don’t you try to land in runway 09 of Samos LGSM, 36 of Skyros LGSY, 16 of Mykonos LGMK and 18 of Elefsis LGEL ? !! In Kerkyra (Corfu) LGKR you get a runway constructed
on landfilled area over water, oriented towards a mountain 7 Nm to the
North and approach this runway by VORDME offset course due to another
mountain to the West and while on short finals you have a hill just East
of Rwy 35 threshold (one of the most famous planespoting balconies in
Europe !). Samos LGSM has some of the most dangerous terrain around
the airport leaving very few options for Go Arround. Right base for rwy
09 has to be flown at 2000 ft to avoid rising terrain within the airport
traffic patern area. Steep rising mountains to the West and North leave
only one approach sector available (from the South) since East sector
does belong to Greece with Turkey's border passing two miles East of the
airport. |
| [ Weather ]
In Greece you will rarely find low clouds, requiring demanding ILS approaches. The large masses of water create strong North winds, though, during both summer and winter especially effective in the coastal airports. When some runways are not lined up N to S (previous para.) this creates great crosswind problems. Here we meet the demand for skilled pilot hands down to the bare “stick and rudder” level, without the use of any helping navaids, lighting, autopilot, FMS, GPS or ATC radar. Perfect examples are Samos LGSM, Iraklion LGIR and Souda LGSA. In Iraklion many airliners get diverted due to strong crosswind. In Samos, eventhough most frequent prevailing wind from NNW, Runway 09 is used for landing (tailwind + turbulence) because turbulence in the short approach sector of runway 27 is prohibiting even for a medium sized airliner. National Air Carrier Olympic Airways sends ATRs instead of 737s due to the high rate of missed approaches (with 737s) in this airport ! On the other hand when rarely winds drop to calm you may get fog situations at coastal airports such as Thessaloniki LGTS, Preveza LGPZ, Kerkyra LGKR and Athens LGAV. |
| [ Neighboring FIRs
] The East part of the Aegean Sea has lots of Islands neighboring to the Turkish FIR. Relations between Turkey and Greece have not been that good for some few hundred years. This FIR, simply, MUST NOT get infringed in real life although day to day relations within Aviation related staff are very good. Try to approach or depart East of Samos, Chios, Kastelorizo, Mitilini Islands and Alexandroupolis in the mainland with a chart showing the FIR boundaries and you’ll see the problem. Within on-line FS flying, though, you will find some very friendly controllers to work with in Turkey. The Italian FIR boundary is ~50 nm NW of Kerkyra airport. To our North we have Albania, FYRoM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
and Bulgaria |
[ Other HvACC Fly-In Debriefs and Comments ] Below you will find links to our debriefing webpages from previous Fly-Ins
we have hosted as also comments on forums from pilots that have flown
in them. |
