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nealmac

Choosing where to go from/to

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11 minutes ago, swiesma said:

I will never join a VA. This is a hobby, not a job :-)

They add to your hobby....a lot.

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10 minutes ago, swiesma said:

I will never join a VA. This is a hobby, not a job :-)

Some (like the one that I'm in now (Worldwide Virtual) let you fly where you want and when you want.  You can also fly tours or other assigned flights.  But, basically, there are very few rules which makes it much more fun.

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Rick Abshier

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2 hours ago, nealmac said:

So how do you ladies and gents decide what airports you're gonna fly from and to? What factors play a part in making such important decisions?

Well, although you say it is a chore, I would consider online flying at VATSIM or IVAO as this is the most realistic experience that you can bring into your home. It has nothing to do with VA that have their own rules.

So for online flying picking up airports depends on ATC coverage:

VATSIM: http://www.vattastic.com/

IVAO: https://webeye.ivao.aero/

For offline flying you are more flexible. You can do training circuits at a demanding airport or just fly from one airport to an other that is 1+ hour away. Next time you start from there and then again fly to the next approriate one. This way you can explore a country or continent very well.

Very often, I choose an airport just because I have a great airport scenery of it.

 

 


Regards,

Chris

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I tend to let the most lucrative jobs/missions in Air Hauler 2 make the decision, since the objective of that is to make money and expand your airline company, but a secondary objective is to make you fly to new places too. That is in fact the main reason I bought the original Air Hauler program, or as Captain Kirk would say: 'to explore strange new worlds' lol.

In doing that, I use FSDT's XPOI Geographical VFR/IFR tool, which as you probably know, overlays markers in the flight sim world for points of interest, town names, nav aids etc, and links to wikipedia in the sim so I can read about things as I fly to new places. It's also interesting to find out where exactly the beacons and nav aids etc which one becomes familiar with are actually situated, for example, for years I'd been flying around in flight sim using the TABLY waypoint in FMCs for departures from EGCC and EGGP, but it was only when I got XPOI that I  learned where that waypoint actually was on the ground (not that far from where I live).

Thus it's very educational, for example, yesterday I was flying in P3D over Paris, where I have a hub in Air Hauler at Le Bourget, and I passed over my photorealistic terrain of the Ile de Francais and specifically, the Père Lachaise Cemetery, which as most people know, is notable for being the place where many famous people were buried, including Jim Morrison, Frederick Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Rossini, Maria Callas etc, etc. But the cemetery was originally not a preferred place to be buried because it is quite far out from the centre of Paris, because of that, it is famous for having literally marketed itself as the place to be buried for Parisians, which its administrators accomplished very successfully by deliberately organising the transfer of the remains of a few famous people at the time when Paris was clearing its cemeteries owing to a shortage of burial space and because of the risk to health from drainage issues which led them to open the Catacombs (also a cool place to visit if you are ever in Paris), thus Jean de La Fontaine and Moliere's remains were reloacted to Père Lachaise deliberately to attract people to choose to be buried alongside those famous people.

Now, I've actually visited Père Lachaise Cemetery in real life, it's fascinating to look around it and really quite moving to see some of the monuments to political groups such as the Communards and numerous resistance fighters from WW2 etc, and so I'm pretty familiar with the place, I even had a nice picnic there once enjoying cheese, bread and wine with a girlfiend lol (not as weird as it sounds, lots of people do, especially near the tomb of Héloïse, which is famous for lovelorn singles leaving letters at the crypt in the hope of finding true love). But when I flew over it in the sim, I checked out the wikipedia link about Oscar Wilde's tomb which popped up in P3D and read all about the trouble Jacob Epstein had when sculpting Wilde's tomb, largely because of the controversy over Wilde's sexuality, but also because of the slightly (for the time) sexually overt nature of the sculpting. Apparently he had to bribe the police guards in the cemetery to allow him to continue working on it.

This is one of the cool things about flying around to new places in the sim and having that wealth of fascinating information become available to you courtesy of a couple of add-ons, Air Hauler and XPOI.

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Alan Bradbury

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30 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

They add to your hobby....a lot.

Not for me :-) I guess it's up to everyones choice, but for me, what I read about them - I don't need / want them :-)

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30 minutes ago, Cargostorm said:

Well, although you say it is a chore, I would consider online flying at VATSIM or IVAO as this is the most realistic experience that you can bring into your home. It has nothing to do with VA that have their own rules.

So for online flying picking up airports depends on ATC coverage:

VATSIM: http://www.vattastic.com/

IVAO: https://webeye.ivao.aero/

For offline flying you are more flexible. You can do training circuits at a demanding airport or just fly from one airport to an other that is 1+ hour away. Next time you start from there and then again fly to the next approriate one. This way you can explore a country or continent very well.

Very often, I choose an airport just because I have a great airport scenery of it.

 

 

Sorry Chris, when I said it's a chore I didn't mean it like that. I meant that I'm temporarily living somewhere that only has a poor WiFi connection at the point of my simming PC. I'm hoping to be in my new place before Christmas, on my own, with no one to annoy me lol. I didn't mean to sound like I thought flying online is a chore at all. In fact, getting on Vatsim and IVAO is something I'm looking forward to.

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Best regards,

 

Neal McCullough

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I fly GA almost exclusively. FSEconomy has directed me to a bunch of airports I would never have selected myself. Some have been hidden gems either because of the surrounding terrain, or maybe a challenging approach, or simply thanks to ORBX's touch. I don't remember what the exact airport was now, but I landed some place in northern California and was greeted with a couple of horses running around just outside of the airport boundary.  In the river beside Santa Paula in SoCal, there was a family of duck swimming around. Nice touches :)


Chris

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1 hour ago, swiesma said:

I will never join a VA. This is a hobby, not a job :-)

Then you totally miss the point of a VA.  Its no different then being here.  You're a member of the community and those in the VA help you technically, will fly with you, talk to you about FS and many are real world pilots amazingly.   Usually the only requirement is one flight a month.  Which isn't too hard even with kids, job, etc.  

It adds to the realism for some in the rank structure and most have great tracking ACARs that will track routes, time, fuel, passengers, cargo, landing rate, etc.  

Is it for everyone?  No.   But there are dozens of types of VAs and its not hard to find one that fits the bill.  

And if you don't like it then you just quit.  


Jason Weaver - WestWind Airlines; FlyUK Airlines; VirtualUnited.org

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There have been some excellent ways of making a flight selection posted here.

The group I fly with always fly on VATSIM, so ATC coverage plays a part in our flight selection, but does not dominate our decision for a few reasons.

1. Airport Scenery (Payware or High Quality Freeware)

NOTE:  This is less of a selection criteria for us since the release of REX World Wide Airports HD, which convert default airport textures to custom and customizable HD textures.  We will simply download an updated AFCAD so the terminals, taxiways and runways are updated and that's it!

2. ATC Coverage.  If there isn't ATC Coverage then we'll look to see if we're flying into a VATSIM HotSpot (an area that usually has coverage or where we know that controllers often monitor the airspace offline and will login to provide service when they see inbound aircraft).

3.  Weather.  As pilots we do everything we can to avoid bad weather, but as flight simmers we seek it out!  Crazy, but we love it!!!!

4. Challenging Arrivals and Approaches, or just extremely unique landscapes and city buildings.

 

 


 

 


Dave Hodges

 

System Specs:  I9-13900KF, NVIDIA 4070TI, Quest 3, Multiple Displays, Lots of TERRIFIC friends, 3 cats, and a wonderfully stubborn wife.

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Where to fly from is easy: the airport where I parked my plane, of course! The destination depends on the time I have and if I have been in a certain direction lately yes or no. That's it. I only fly in Norway so it's not that I have thousand options. Usually the decision for my destination is made pretty quickly. And btw I do all this and the planning before I start P3D.

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13 minutes ago, jason99vmi said:

Then you totally miss the point of a VA.  Its no different then being here.  You're a member of the community and those in the VA help you technically, will fly with you, talk to you about FS and many are real world pilots amazingly.   Usually the only requirement is one flight a month.  Which isn't too hard even with kids, job, etc.  

It adds to the realism for some in the rank structure and most have great tracking ACARs that will track routes, time, fuel, passengers, cargo, landing rate, etc.  

Is it for everyone?  No.   But there are dozens of types of VAs and its not hard to find one that fits the bill.  

And if you don't like it then you just quit.  

 

Well.... I know that West Wind is a little different than most VAs, having been around a very long time.

But from a pilot perspective, every other VA is really nothing more than a collection of pilots who use the ACARs as a means to track their flights and for some to generate hours spent in front of the computer in a mildly competitive way.  I'm certain some don't want to think of it this way, but that's what it really is.  But now I'm going to tell you why it works in flight sim, and why it works so very, very well!  Please take what I'm about to say in CONTEXT.

Where the Hobby is concerned, flight simmers are by their very nature solitary (it's just them and their computer).  Am I guessing at this?  Not one bit.  30+ years not just in flight sim, but in the flight sim community, having worked one-on-one with hundreds or flight simmers and communicated with far more via email, private message and in the forums.

So if you create an organization where

1. Anyone can join (no qualifications)

2. No membership requirements (except maybe 1 flight per month, which can be waived)

3. Communication with others members is optional, and if one chooses to do so it will likely be via a highly impersonal manner - a web forum.

This fits with the solitary nature of most flight simmers, and at the same time they can tell themselves and take pride in the fact that they "belong" to a flight sim organization - even add a VA Banner to their forum signature!  I mean, they didn't do anything special to qualify a member, and they didn't do anything special within the group, they just log in to ACARs to track their flights and when or if the achieve a certain number of hours in front of the computer they earn a promotion.  Some VAs even have examinations that  you can take as you Googling the answers.

I am not belittling Virtual Airlines or the people who belong to them.  But lets be real about what the vast majority of VAs really are.  Remember what I said above... this is what most flight simmers want out of a VA, so it's certainly not a bad thing, not at all!

For me personally, the attraction to such a group never existed - though I was an active member with DeltaVA.org for several years because some of the guys I flew with begged me to.  I admit that I'm pretty far outside the mean where flight simmers are concerned, as I much prefer belonging to an interpersonal group where true friendships and bonds are created, and we speak together as frequently as we do with our non-flight sim friends (Skype on personal phones allow for free audio/video calls around the world).  It was precisely this type of atmosphere that resulted in numerous friends visiting me and my wife from Europe and all over the US, and it's not uncommon for members to get phone calls from other members as they are driving down the road!  The first time I got a Video Call from Algiers as I was driving to have lunch was a trip!  But today getting such calls from members of the group is fairly routine.  It may have been flight sim that brought us together regardless of the country we live in, but it was the interpersonal nature of our group which allowed us to become good friends and our conversations are as much the same as they are with non-flight sim friends, except that we have that too!

Something else... it's one thing to fly Shared Cockpit with another pilot, but it's an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE TO FLY WITH A GOOD FRIEND! Truly a recipe for a memorable flight!

 

 

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Dave Hodges

 

System Specs:  I9-13900KF, NVIDIA 4070TI, Quest 3, Multiple Displays, Lots of TERRIFIC friends, 3 cats, and a wonderfully stubborn wife.

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I use Ideal Flight. It remembers my aircraft and the last place I landed. It then allows me to create a flight plane to a new destination( picked by Ideal Flight), and off I go. Ideal allows one to configure it so that with one click, flying is always a new adventure. It's that versatile and easy to use.

tony

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1 hour ago, J van E said:

Where to fly from is easy: the airport where I parked my plane, of course! The destination depends on the time I have and if I have been in a certain direction lately yes or no. That's it. I only fly in Norway so it's not that I have thousand options. Usually the decision for my destination is made pretty quickly. And btw I do all this and the planning before I start P3D.

See, the thing is I don't want to limit myself to 1 country. 


Best regards,

 

Neal McCullough

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