The Easy way to connect to Vatsim!!!

[Guest Reap]

I sympathise with previous posters, who have tried for days or weeks to get online with Vatsim, with the tedious 3rd party software problems, with the registration and with the sheer helplessness of it all.I have been there, I spent my whole 2 week Christmas Holidays trying.I would have failed, unless you are a programmer or similar you will struggle.The Easy Way??I joined a VA who had an active and friendly membership who flew on IVAO and Vatsim. They got me on Teamspeak and one guy spent several hours ironing out the problems, but it worked and I got online. I still could not get on vatsim though because of other problems, however, making a post on the Vatsim Forum I recieved an offer of help on Teamspeak again and I was given several hours of help and eventually I got on Vatsim. I even got good tuition on ATC procedures flying VFR circuits, valuable learning.So after nearly giving up myself , several times I now say it really is worth the effort, the experience of live ATC was terrific and this is all I want to fly now.But what I say is, to all those experienced Vatsimmers who can help, make an offer of teamspeak help, because it makes all the difference.

[Guest Agrajag]

Great post. Thanks for the sympathy. I personally finally got it all working but even that was a bit frustrating. For me, the culmination of getting it all going was pretty much reward with very little ATC coverage when I wanted to fly, let alone WHERE I wanted to fly. That's the first thing I gave up. On the plus side, it got me flying to places I'd never have gone before so that's somewhat of a decent trade-off. But here it is 10am on Sunday and I'm in the mood to fly but in total there are 7 controllers across the entire US and that's more coverage than any other country. The end result there is that I'd once again be in a position of essentially "Flying the Empty Skies" and I can do that without VATSIM. The reality for me now is that I do see the benefits and the potential and I would fly this way, and look to first now, but more times than not I end up back in FS without VATSIM and right now that means I'm using Radar Contact which has its own positives and negatives. But at least with it I can fly anywhere and be covered throughout. With the release of SB 3.0 I would hope things would improve and over time things should improve on their own. But again, for me right now, all the work required really needs to pay off more heavily to make this worthwhile.

[Guest ielchitz]

Agra,It appears that your biggest problem with VATSIM is the lack of controllers working the area you want at the times you want. I can totally relate to that but we must all remember that the controllers are merely people enjoying the hobby as well.If you would like I could take you through the steps required to be a controller. That way you could add to the ATC services supplied on the network. The more ATC and coverage we provide - the better it is for everyone.

[Guest Agrajag]

That is one of my concerns and yes, I FULLY understand the catch-22 here but as a user of the system, that isn't my concern. In the end, this is what would keep a lot of people from bothering.I'd ALMOST rather that people agreed to cover certain areas in a priority order (again, note the ALMOST there). At least then you'd pretty much know, for example, that you could fly out of Chicago and get coverage to somewhere near it. That just wouldn't really work but the alternative is to re-arrange when and where you want to fly continually.And I cannot begin to tell you, in my VERY short tenure using it, how many times I've seen coverage from point A to point B, got into the system, setup my flight plan, went to contact someone only to find they're gone and that the destination coverage is gone or leaves during my flight. Again, WHY this happens is irrelevant to would-be users. THAT it happens is all that matters. As I said, down the line I have hope that this will all be different, that there will be a backlog of ATC people and lines to get into the server, but that's not happening anytime soon.In fact, it might even be worthwhile to create some sort of hybrid system that covers you with humans where possible and fills in with default (or better) ATC when none are present, until such time as the holes fill. I can only speak for me here, but I would much prefer to hear from limited default ATC than to hear nothing at all.

[N330DG 44]

I can understand you at the fullest!!I'm flying at VATSIM now for about a year and this happend to me too. But with time, I was able to identify areas with stable control facilities. Furthermore, I simply became quicker in creating and filing my flight plans. Once, good old Harv PM'd and asked me, if I am going to fly today because I was logged on for about an hour and still not in the air. For me, the difference between artificial and human ATC is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE. You are free to disconnect from VATSIM and use artificial ATC at any time! But to get ATC from human controllers, who strive for, and achieve an astounding level of professionalism is AWESOME.

[Guest Agrajag]

I agree too which is why I hope this continues to flourish and grow. Human controllers are just fantastic. Here's hoping it all does work out.