lifeguardhall

I've got it pretty well figured out now between vpilot and vatsim. I use my surface 3 from my company with jeppesen flight deck but I don't know if I can put a program like vatsim or vpilot on it. I doubt I could use my ipad for vatsim, but I don't mind alt/enter'ing out on occasion. What I've noticed so far is that the controllers do quite well and most of them seem to be younger. I'm impressed by that. I mean, occasionally I'll get a heading while I'm in the middle of a RNAV departure lol but overall they are great. Once in a while however, there will be "pilots" that are on that probably shouldn't be on. I'm not talking about people that are learning/struggling. I'm talking about the guy in a B 777 taking an intersection at the middle of the runway to takeoff, or the guy that was told to give way to me, says he has me in sight and just as i'm about to taxi by, he decides to turn and stop in front of me. The ones that aren't taking it serious, but they seem to be exception.

The problem I had on my very first flight is that the Miami center guy wasn't logged in when I started the flight. He came in midflight and expected me to know he was there. Either way, I've figured things out, as strange as they may be. Someone may be running a center, but he's also doing ground, tower, approach and departure all from the one freq. Also, I can't stand to run anything in windowed mode, it kind of ruins everything for me, in the sense of immersion.

The problem is that this controller that tried to contact me wasn't logged on when I started my flight. He apparently logged on while I was in cruise. That's what is annoying. Am I supposed to minimize the sim to check on this stuff? If so, sounds like this may not be for me, however, now that I know what the beep/noise is, I now know to check the messages which is fine by me. I appreciate everyone taking the time to help me out. I'll give this another go and look into the suggestions. I may hang around these forums as well. I've always popped in to read, just never took the time to post. Always too busy it seems.

Like I said, I have been flight simming since the 90's, but flying real planes since before I could drive a car. The main thing I want is to be able to know if there are controllers that will actually be online, through my route, so I don't have to go through getting kicked off again like I did on my very first flight. I use my Surface 3 that work issued me with Jeppensen Flight Deck to plan my routes. I get constant updates for all of my charts and plates though my EFB. Thanks for the quick reply.

I guess I should say a little about myself. I'm retired from the military and flying for my second airline. I've been flight simming since the 90's. Currently, I'm on medical leave from my current airline due to injuries sustained in the military overseas. I'm about to go back to work and thought I'd use FSX to get back in the saddle, so to speak. This time, however, I figured I'd use Vatsim since I've known about it for years, just never messed around with it. Before I get into what I've noticed let me say that I enjoyed it. Having said that, there are things to be careful with, on the pilot side, that could potentially give me some bad habits that I wouldn't want to take to work with me. I also realize that because most places aren't going to have the full menu of frequencies, the controllers, I'm sure, are doing their best to do things correctly. Things that happened on this flight, an out and back; I filed a flight plan, no different that I'd use at work complete with DP, STAR and Approach. The only controller available during the flight was tower at the airfield I was flying to, it was a very large airfield. I contacted Tower while I'm descending via the arrival so they'd have a heads up and was told to just contact him at the outer marker. I assumed he could see my flight plan. Once I was on the localizer, but not quite to the OM, tower contacted me and asked me to shift left to a parallel set of runways. Ok, no problem. Basically, the flight to the airfield went fine considering there was really only one controller to talk to. On the way back, it was a bit different. As I'm getting my fms ready for the return trip I'm listening to the tower freq. People are using tower for ground. Cool, I know how they're running this. I taxi to the ramp/ground boundary, call tower to taxi to the runway. I get the instructions and taxi a specific runway. On the way to the runway, the tower closes. Great, now what do I do...I noticed however, that someone at the same time as tower leaving, picked up approach/departure. I switch to departure and get ready to taxi on the runway to leave since there's no tower to tell me to. As I'm about to start moving, departure contacts me and tells me I should be at a different runway. I let him know I followed the instructions from tower and that they just logged off. I'm told to go ahead and depart on the runway I'm at. So all is great, I depart, leave the airspace and released on my own navigation. On my way back there are no controllers along my route or at the airfield I'm going to land at as far as Vatspy is concerned. All goes well, at least I think, on the way back. As I'm about to start descending via my filed arrival, vPilot disconnects me from Vatsim. Apparently a center controller tried to contact me via text to switch to his freq. Honestly, I'm like ##### in my head and wondering what just happened. I go ahead and finish the flight and land. After I shut down FSX it looks like someone did try to text me but I had no idea. I do remember hearing a beep but I had no idea what it was. I'm new. In the end, did I enjoy it? Yes, partially, but I didn't appreciate being kicked off even though it wasn't a big deal. How am I supposed to know what freqs/controllers are available during a flight so I can plan ahead? I figured I'd be safe just using Vatspy. I want to use Vatsim again but I want to have the resources available to be able to know who is controlling different areas during my flight.

That's a weird way to put it. You mean furloughed from "x" airline where you flew the CRJ? Hmmm