Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

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IAHM-COL
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Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Nov 07, 2016 3:37 pm

Talking about UK+Ireland 2016


Hi All,

I invite you to share your experience with the Festival UK+Ireland 2016 below


I will begin:

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good

I am very happy to recognize that the festival is in my opinion the most interesting MP event in FG World to this date. On one hand, it is the largest event, which counts with the most massive participation of pilots, and tower controllers, in a localized region. It is also the longest in duration: 48 continuous hours. At any single time during those 48 h you can see pilots cruising, and eyes looking on the mpmap viewers.

There are certainly some peak hours. Specifically The afternoon (18-24 UTC each days). When the times for European and american side players better coincide. Although Saturday trends to be busier, the last 2 hours of the festival shows a new influx of pilots willing to wave good bye to the festival for a following of six months.

Pilots are, generally, very capable and willing to make a merry festival for everyone. I found a bit more trolling interest during Japan Festival in Spring. On UK festival. At least in the times I frequented, I did not notice anyone focused on trolling, and you can see a few pilots with less experience and thus doing some runway incursions, or unsure of how to do a runway backtrack. But they all behave calm and procceed with their best intentions.

All pilots I've got to see this Festival were, in one word, kind, professional, and honestly interested in doing their best performance, within the limitation of their own skills.

The ATCs.

The festival in UK+Ireland draw outstanding interest from the eye=holders point of view.

In previous instances, we counted with maybe 4 people interested in ATC, sometimes less, and thus, less positions remained open. This time, a longer list of volunteers indicated their interest to participate on towers. For coordination purposes this meant, off course, a much longer period for settling and discussing which positions everyone wanted to cover. Also, --and given UK airspaces are rather intriguing : see IVAO UK --, the larger number of ATC avaible implied a much longer study of airspaces to determine proper boundaries and best hand-off proccedures. When is a pilot in my area? when is he not? A question that took much planning this time.
But clearly, it all came down positive, for both the pilot experience and the ATC comfort. During sometimes on the afternoon of Saturday, Pilots enjoyed multiple hand-off in a London<->Edinburgh route, passing over Edinburgh (Talla) Birmingham (Daventry), Manchester (Stafa) and London centers.

I appreciate the efforts of every ATC participating. Not only because it allowed a very entertaining and comprehensive coverage of the complex UK airspaces, but also because everyone of you kept high levels of performance, friendliness and if-I-may-say, Professionalism. As far as I know, no pilot, regardless of their level of experience and skills was left feeling outcasted.

I will take a minute for specific recognition (from my personal experience) :

*Raven: Jumping late on this train, but rapidly getting informed of the festival's specifics, and offered the positions for Manchester at times much harder for European/American controllers. Thus keeping the festival alive for the extended hours. (he is located in SouthEast Asia). I always had wished the festival sparked more interest on these locations so it keeps active and strong regardless of regional time zones for extended times.

*ATCJay: Keeping London Alive from Standstet. I personally visited his service from Manchester(Raven) and I was extremely pleased at the ATC service in both ends.

* Oskar: Thanks for taking care of Manchester for the European/American time zones. Manchester became the location, this festival, with longer hours. I did have the pleasure to have the direct hand-off with him. And I appreciated the smoothness for this transition. Oskar, in spite of his youth, had been very calm and precise.

* ATC411: You did great. Period. Personally, I received multiple mentions that your service was really outstanding. And you were also a big festival magnet. Lots of traffic kept strong to Dublin. It's funny, because at a given moment --close to beginning of the festival-- I feared for all Ireland. Both Northern and Ireland services were last minute cancelled, and the name *UK+Ireland* rapidly became not sense. But you agreed leaving Talla to me, and relocate to Dublin, and you had barely 1 week to prepare for airspaces, and plan your position. And did with a level of 5 stars. I pressume, for what I saw on the maps, you had the busiest location on this festival, frequently receiving traffic from both London and Edinburgh centers, creating quite an interesting triangle. You also received pilots coming from the trans-atlantic, and continental traffic in Concorde coming From Jomo on the final hours. Quite an interesting marathon you had there :D

The Mini-Events

This time I was aware of two mini-events. The Road Rage in Isle of Mann with Lesbof, and the "Abottsinch to Llanbedr" fly-by.

I saw a couple of pilots road raging in Isle of Mann. Guy, and lesbof did completed some circuits.

The FGUK home base visit was really nicely participated. At a certain moment it seemed the whole UK traffic had conspired to land in the now-a-days abandoned/closed airport EGOD, and some of us, with the scenery installed, found the amazing FGUK scenery, with animated and pretty hangars. The participating, again was amazing: we got a lot of interesting non-military aircraft coming down here: Such as the Jumbolino (JWocky), the DC6B (Side), a Do328 (D-ECHO), and a passenger's 777 (KL666). On the military side we've got The RAF Super King Air350 (IH-COL), The Janet 736 (AF574), a KC137 Boeing 707 Special edition (Catalanoic), a Mustang P51d (Onox --shooting fire to everyone??) and a Bleriot XI from the WWI themes (Lesbof). This mini-event, in my opinion was a Max-Blast! :D

The Red Flag

48 hours of military exercises went on in North Scotland. Sometimes they approached Edinburgh Scene from the North, but always remained on Military Airspaces without incursion in the Civilian zones. I don't know of a summary of events yet, but certainly they had amazing time practicing all kind of Military situations up there. And it looked amazingly active all the time. The Red Flag Operation is certainly a very interesting community with the FG ecosystem. Thanks guys!!


The Bad

In contrast with the Good above. There is not much to mention in "the bad". But I do have a couple mentions, thou:

1. The sick. I wish prompt recoveries to 2 participants that had to bow out earlier or be present for reduced amount of times due to un-planned/last minute health issues. We missed you, and we kept you present wishing you full and prompt recovery

2. The community split. Organizing this festival with the current community split is a bit of a hazzle that we suffered for a whole one year now. We succeeded finding ways around it, but having to coordinate, and inform about this event on two separate forums causes unnecessary resentments. I appreciate the efforts of OPFOR77 for spiking up the interest about the festival on Curtis' Forum. On this direction, I would like to see someone stepping in to fill the gap and keep the rest of the community informed and engaged.
Once KL666 mentioned a very good approach. We can use thejabberwocky forum for planning and coordination purposes. Specially since I like collaborating in that part of the efforts and I am limited to my ability to participate on Curtis' controlled zones. But Information and communication could be kept by making "general announcements" of what is decided on Curtis with some better frequency as to maintain the interest.

The festival participation is outstanding, but I still fear that it has been hurt on the trenches of "their event-not ours" territorial behavior. And with the realities of our community we have to live with, we can improve on that front. Honestly.

The Ugly

I only have to mention in this line, that in my opinion the FGUK takes "The Ugly" line. Not only because the inability to integrate from the venerable 3rd party hangar, but also for the rudeness they treated members of their own team for making an effort to bridge gaps. I dare to say the big leaders there, specifically StuartC and Voodoo that they must remember their FGUKers are PEOPLE. And thus, they expect not only respect and comradery, but also friendship, and understanding.

I wish your events long life, and hopefully clean unoccupied airspaces where you can fly comfortably without the need to feel you must resort to Territorialistic behaviors, such as the one shown by Warty harrasing with a Sukoi to LATAM-1 while completing a Dubling-Manchester flight on a B773.

You guys were not disappointing thou. that I admit.



Best to all,
IH-COL
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R.M.S.
If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it?

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby J Maverick 16 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 3:55 pm

+1
Will post my Festival experience later ;) .
Regards, Mav
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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby LesterBoffo » Mon Nov 07, 2016 3:56 pm

Hear, Hear! great summation Israel.

I'd like to add that Josh and Turbo were a pleasure to ATC with. The only problem I have is with my own limited hearing, I learned more about actively flying under ATC control from both Josh and Turbo. There's also a weird game crash that kept occurring about 25 nm NW of the WAL navaid, forgot the actual VOR it was happening at.

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby jwocky » Mon Nov 07, 2016 4:13 pm

The Festival was, as always over the last year, fun to fly. I had before it a long time no flight-hours, so I was clumsy at times, a bit heavy on the stick and sometimes surprised by the newest bugs in some planes. The 777 successfully killed me ... and others ...
What I find personally a little bit rude is pilots suddenly popping up and firing missiles at people. No, not FGUK, someone else, the person knows. Even if it is only a test, you can ask someone and do that off the civilian flights. We have areas that are especially designed as test areas, remote, with big land, no crossing traffic, optimal for testing, be it planes or weapon systems. To fly into a mini event and start firing is rude! End of that story!

The ATCs were great, all of them. Josh talks sometimes a little bit fast for me, but that's okay, I am still not really a native speaker. And yes, my approaches are slow as molasses, you all took that with great patience ;-) Josh is still wondering how it is possible to fly that slow without falling out of the sky, but Israel was with me through two or three go-arounds without even losing the patience for a moment ;-).
Why I mention this is, it proves, the Festival is also an event for the not so proficient pilots. The split between semi-pros and noobs that still ruled when I came to FG is overcome and that is a positive thing.

England ... oh well, the system was a bit confusing. No tower was actually named by the place where it is. But that is England for you. They also drive still on the other side of the road there.

What else? Oh yes, pilots! Maybe it's only me, but I had the feeling, there were less near collisions. People were in general more aware about the rest of the traffic. Maybe it is a sign, we all get better at this, maybe we were just in a less adrenaline loaded mood, I don't know, but it made thigs a lot easier. Real air traffic is supposed to bring a lot of people to places without crashing in the air, so, that was realistic, in my opinion. If you want to fly near pass by, fly military.

Those are my remarks about the Festival. I kind of regret, that I had not much time to fly before it and therefore messed up royally one or two times, but that was not a Festival problem but one with my schedules lately. Now, the number of mini-events is probably something, we can only work on when we manage to get more people on FG, which, given the current community split is a hard thing to do. So I don't see any way to improve at this front, at least not at the moment and of course, the attitude on the Curtis forum "this is not our event" doesn't help. You guys have no events, no events at all, so ... all the events your people can visit are actually made by others and your "no info" politics denies them this option and makes you even more look like a dictatorial regime.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby KL-666 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 6:04 pm

The Festival coinciding with the FsWeekend seems to have reaped result. Even though there is no internet at FsWeekend, Mickybadia seems to have managed to show off online MP.

https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=30504&p=298276&sid=e356f22936e75440c191ebfe3288bca0#p298274

For the rest of the event, i have only good experience. All patient ATC's and pilots doing their best to comply. Have not seen a troll anywhere. Luckily London was ATC-free at the time of the fguk event. And the other way around, no fguk-er was to be found at EGOD at the time of the mini event there. Someone shooting missiles at me does not hurt, it has no influence on my flight.

Pity i did not get a chance to interact with the rest of Europe more than one Bratwurst fetching run with Jwocky to Frankfurt

So all in all the Festival was a very pleasant experience.

Kind regards, Vincent

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby Octal450 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 6:39 pm

I guess I should write a little note:

But first,
The compliments mean so much to me, really cool to know people enjoyed my work :) I guess my frantic preparation and studying airport charts payed off!

Thanks, Israel for the kind words, also KL-666, JWOCKY, L3sb0f, LATAM, and others too (can't list all sorry)!

The Good:
Traffic levels were way higher than I expected, and all the pilots were knowledgeable, and/or willing to accept advice. Pilots were friendly, and didn't mind when I made a mistake. Very nice.

ATC-pie worked as expected, I had a few minor issues with website-filed flightplans, otherwise, it was great.

I enjoyed seeing pilots come back, and I wish I could have switched thing up for them, but the winds were detirmed to keep the runway config ILS appr rw28, vis appr rw34 on request, departiong rw28 and rw34.

Really nice coordinating with Turbo, on planes entering my airspace!

HerbyW dropping people over the airfield, pretty funny.

UAL9 and another plane with callsign I can't remember: emergencies, was fun to coordinate that stuff

AFR6938 and AF2222 flying with full flightplans, really nice

The Bad:
eagle: Simulating hyjacking, sending bad messages over MP
D-MAFC: FlightGear kept crashing for him :(
A3007: forgot about you until you cross the ILS path, sorry!


The festival was really a blast, thanks Israel and jwocky and others for coordinating it all, and I'm looking forward to the Spring 2017 Festival!!!

Best Regards,
Josh

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby KL-666 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:02 pm

Ow i completely forgot to mention all the activity way up north of Operation Red Flag. Though fighters are not my thing, it looked impressive on the map. Did any of you visit Edinburgh by any chance?

Kind regards, Vincent

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby J Maverick 16 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 8:11 pm

I was of the idea of having a short trip over there with C-137R or similar but didn't had time...
OPRF event was fun, downed 7 MiGs and destroyed some ground targets, without counting the strategic importance of the KC-137R-RT of delivering fuel and logistics at EGQS.
Regards, Mav
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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Nov 07, 2016 9:09 pm

it0uchpods wrote:I enjoyed seeing pilots come back, and I wish I could have switched thing up for them, but the winds were detirmed to keep the runway config ILS appr rw28, vis appr rw34 on request, departiong rw28 and rw34.


Talking about Weather.
In Edinburgh weather was really nice, with clear skies most of the time.
But the wind kept blowing from the north. Sometimes gusting, other times kept strong (10+KTS), other times more calm (3-6KTS) but gusting from heading 300.
This forced us to operate with Edinburgh "alternative" runway 30.

(weather became "calm winds" the very last 1 hr, and then RWY 06 became operative for the very last few arrivals and departures)

Well...
RWY 30
1. Short
2. For departure pilot must backtrack. The taxiways to the east are "non-operative"
3. Only visual or RNAV approach , but no ILS available.
4. It has wonderful views from the City of Edinburgh. Pilots with terraGIT enjoyed the OSM2City edinburgh City, certainly.


So, close to 100% of pilots coming into Edinburgh this weekend were requested by the ATC (me), to go visual on 30. That caused a couple misallignments, a couple missed approaches, and 1 aereal catastrophe (777 related bug).
In other words, it kept Edinburgh a rather challenging place to succesfully get into from the pilot perspective.

A few pilots vowed out after attempting visual rule, and went for a crosswind ILS guided landing 06.
Then we got a tu154b and more clearly an AN225 who must used the Crosswind 06 due to runway specifications.

Omega visited me for ILS practice and instrument practice around. He had an interesting time with beacon instrumentation failure, and ILS touch and go RWY 24 on 5-7 KT crosswinds and gusts. He is quite good, and landed very well on those conditions.

So, again, I hope you guys appreciated the more complex VFR conditions prevailing EGPH this weekend.
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R.M.S.
If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it?

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Re: Talking About UK+Ireland 2016

Postby Octal450 » Mon Nov 07, 2016 10:20 pm

I'm fairly certain they never land rw 30/12
They pick the best runway for the ILS approach.

Josh


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