Hi All,I gave Vatsim a try about 5 years ago. Right at the time they were shut down for a week or two due to a threatened lawsuit. At that time I found there was a general atmosphere of it being

Most Definatley I find Most Controllers Very Helpful And at Time very Chatty when in there Airspace I think your missing a great experianceAnd I've flown quite Frequently in the last couple of years With NO Problems at allCheers

I am slowing approaching 2,000 hours on VATSIM since joining in May 2001. I never fly offline anymore. It is a great experience being controlled by real people and never had a bad experience save the occasional newbie pilot. Most controllers are very competent and some are actual real world controllers as well as having some real world pilots. I would not trade VATSIM for AI ATC any day of the week. Once SB3 hits the cyber highway, things will only get 10 times better.

You said it B777ER, online flying is the best and I also don't fly unless online ATC coverage or not. It is the best!

You said it B777ER, online flying is the best and I also don't fly unless online ATC coverage or not. It is the best!

Ive looked at it and am interested in getting into it, but thats what im worried of, im prob nowhere near as good as some people, but id like to learn..im pretty sure everyone will get frustrated with new people. So thats why ive stayed away

When I first joined up, I took a Cessna and tried to take off from O'hare... well, in VATSIM, this is a turboprop+ only airport! The controller was very friendly and polite, and kindly asked me to restart at Meigs or Midway.That being done, I flew a short "training" hop out of the Chicago airspace, and then back in... It was not difficult! I have listened to aviation-band scanners for a long time, and have a couple real flight hours in a Class-C area under my belt, so I did have some familiarity. Following that, I did a hop from Boston to Providence, entirely under the control of ATC. I caused a traffic alert, but you couldn't see a damn thing out the computerized windscreen for traffic (FS2002). The last flight I did was PVD to DCA. I didn't turn on my pitot heat, and the tube iced up. This caused my aircraft's autothrottle to push to the firewalls, and I ended up severely breaking the :) It's only got that "private club" feeling because ATC is often times a foreign language to people. While it's not restricted to real world pilots, if you know your real world radio, you'll do well there. -Greg

To Tom and Slimdady,I suggest you read the Vatsim and Procontroller forums here for similar threads and replies from the older Vatsim/Satco members.If you make your first flight from an airport that is in the middle of a major fly-in then expect to get cold shouldered to some extent, the controllers will not have enough time to help you.Read up about flying with Vatsim on their main site, check other Vatsim sites for pilot tutorials so you know what to expect.Spend some time sat at an airport with controllers and traffic and just listen to the ATC 'chatter' so you become familiar with it.For your first few flights make them from a airport that has ATC but does not have a lot of traffic, that usually means mid-week and from a regional airport. That way the controller(s) will have time to help you should you need it.The other main thing is make sure you can fly your a/c off line, Vatsim, or IVAO for that matter, is not the place to try out your a/c :-)Hope to see you in the Vatsim skies in the near future.Rgds

My initial experience was similar to yours, Tom. However, I've been back many times since and finally I am beginning to understand the "aero speak" language. Even gradually I am beginning to understand the arcane SID STARS stuff which you'll encounter right away if you pop into a major VATSIM controlled airport.It is a club but a disciplined and polite group. I contrast VATSIM/IVAO with some of the FSHost servers. Once I attempted an "adventure" flight using a FSHost server and found myself being "buzzed" by a pitts who finally landed, taxi up to me, and caused a collision which reset my FS. At that same civilian airport, was an F16 doing touch and goes without a peep on the local CTAF freq concerning his intentions.So yes, it's an exclusive group with stringent requirements for admission but I say price of admission is returned many times. I say give it another try. BTW, the new Advanced Voice Client (replacement for the Roger Wilco that was used for voice comms) makes the experience even better. Larry

How good is the coverage of ATC lately in terms of Approach, Centers, towers? Is there a way to find that out before flying? You mentioned boston and providence - were you controlled the whole way or was just the middle covered? Very interested by VATSIM, never had the time to download, install, and get into it. Love to know more.

Coverage is fair, not great...There are different layers of coverage, as you note. Take, for example, the northeast corridor between NYC and Boston.The NYC area is very well covered with center, approach/departure, towers, and ground. Working up along CT and RI, there are fewer controllers, but you still have NY Center and BOS Center. My BOS-PVD flight was covered locally by the Boston area controllers, and the BOS Center controller gave me my approach vectors and landing instructions.If you have CENTER coverage, you should be able to have vectors and flight following to your favorite airport. There are software packages which will show you a map of the controlled areas, but I cannot think of it's name...-Greg

Online flying with VATSIM is probably as near as you can get to reality in a "virtual " world.I've done about 300 hours in the past year or so and enjoyed every minute of it.ATC is normally very helpful whatever the circumstances.I don't fly airline - usually prefer military turboprops or helicopters and tend to fly to/from mil fields .Probably the most enjoyable experience was the Washington Squared event a couple of months ago - 6 hour flight in a C-5a coast to coast with literally hundreds of people online - all went very smoothly.Gridley- if you use Servinfo you can see exactly what current ATC coverage is and get the situation updated as often as you like.Additionally Eurobook lets you see what planned coverage is available in EU.Purely my personal opinion - I prefer VAtSIM to IVAO as , in general I find ATC coverage more available in the places I want to fly- no other reason.Get on line and have funDave

If you use google search for servinfo. It is a program that shows you all the traffic, controllers, and weather online. As for the atc coverage, if it is only the center up then they control everything from clearances, taxis, and IFR approach vectors. But there might be also terminals, towers, ground, clearance del, up also and in that case it is like the real world with handoffs to other controllers. If there is no atc coverage in a spot during or for all of your flight, there is a unicom freq you can broadcast your intentions over. Hope to see you out there, Cheers!

What do you do the rest of the way? Can you use FS ATC for the rest?Thanks for the info!sg

As a result of this thread, I did some poking. VATSIM.net has a great FAQ (which doesn't seem to include the info regarding how to get this working with FS2004, but that info must be there somewhere), that has a table with all required software and accessories including ServInfo. I'm looking forward to checking this out this weekend.Are there times when VATSIM is more populated than others?Thanks againsg