Many thanks for that reply Hoss.Not being that side of the scope I had no idea a private msg caused such problems, even *I* wil be more careful with the next time :)

Guess not, :-( Well, I'll take back everything I said on my last post. Last night I managed to get myself into some really crowded airspace over in Atlanta. Did I say Fleetwood RC? Did I say off-line? What was I on? This is trully "as real as it gets". I even sat still at the taxiway just to watch DAL1102 touchdown right behind me. ATL_TWR granted me permission for this despite being extremelly busy with all the other traffic. That's what I call interactive. Guess I was spending too much time in lonely skies. Now my question: Can I come to sunday's fly-in? Can I? huh? Can I? :-ukliam

Hi Mau,I still stand by what I said a few msgs ago :-)A major fly-in is not a place to start learning to fly on line.In your post you say you would have to d/l SIDs & STARs which suggests to me that you don't need those in RC. BTW I bought RC when it first came out and think it is an excellent program but have not used it in quite a while because a lot of my flying is with VATSIM.Also do you have to taxi accurately to a specified stand in RC?Although your experience to date seems to have been getting vectors for T/O and approaches most controllers, especially during heavy fly-ins, expect you to be able to 'fly the charts' so you need to be competent in that. In Europe it is even more important because most airports have SIDs from the runway to the transition unlike in the States where most major airports have DPs which are mainly vectors.BTW When you think you are good, especially with ground charts, try a flight into Schiphol (EHAM) at night, and don't tell me you didn't get lost :-lol To finish, I was not trying to put newbies off, just suggesting things are not quite as easy as off line flying, even with RC or similar programs ;-)I would think, and know from experience, that a complete newbie at a major fly-in would be put off more doing that than having a few familiarisation flights in a less crowded environment.I'm sure you will enjoy your flying with VATSIM, and who knows we may cross at FL350 :-)Fly safe

I just flew online on Vatsim for the first time this past weekend and found it to be a very enjoyable experience. I started digging through this forum this morning and found this thread, which has also been very helpful and educational. Thanks FS_freak for starting this thread. You have helped another newbie by starting it. Also, thanks to Ian for posting the addresses. They are also very helpful.KP