Sunday 23rd Online Flight Results

Gents,

A HUGE thankyou to all who showed, and to those who had some connection probs; thanks for sticking it out! Thank your Chris for your ATC! This is probably the most thankless job out there, so thank you for sticking to it on this extreemly difficult approach! KEep up the good work and learning experience!

Thank you to Red Airlines for the server time!

Jerry, lets here your real-world story!

As Mr. Wayne Sr said in Batman Begins "Why do you fall? To learn to pick yourself back up"!

SPA Wing-Nuts;

I had a great time today flying into Queenstown, NZ with all of you. Thank you everyone for showing up. It is always great to see so many SPA airplanes in the air at once. For those that kept getting kicked off, or that could not connect...sorry about that. I don't understand this computer stuff well enough to help with that. The different server Naresh pointed us to seemed to help...Thanks Naresh!

As far as the ATC goes...a BIG thank you to Chris for giving it a try. As you have all noticed I'm sure...the ATC part is much more difficult than flying the airplane.

For all those that care...here is my explanation of how it should be handled. Keep in mind I have never flown into NZ, and thus much of this is supposition.

Looking at the NZQN approach plate it appears that Queenstown does not have an "App Control". Thus "Center" normally would NOT vector you for the approach, but seperate you from each other as you fly the app on your own. The "Tower" would not do it. The facility would need an "App Control".
Thus: the first airplane to get there would shoot the full VOR/DME CHARLIE approach...without being assigned headings by Center. Those airplanes that came after would be put in Holding somewhere while waiting their turn to shoot the App. This is based on the airport being IFR...or with an App starting at 10,000 feet...even marginal VFR. The Tower could call the aircraft on Final as "landing assured", or, the aircraft could desend to VFR conditions AND cancel their IFR flightplan, at which time the next airplane would be cleared for the App. The exception to this would be the possible use of "Timed Approaches"...I don't know the ATC rules in NZ. The reason this would work (if allowed in NZ) is that the "Missed App" procedure does not interfer with the App.

Again I don't know the rules in NZ, but in most countries the use of visual seperation (Center) is not authorized except when under Tower control. I know Germany is (or was in my day) an exception to this.

I do not make the above comments with anything in mind other than trying to help and explain how things in the real world work...take it for what it is worth.

Again, I had a good time...thanks for all the participation!

Jerry

Thanks to Chris for the great ATC that he provided for us, sorry not all of you got connect. To all the pilots a job well done.

Thanks jerry for the explanation above.

And to Red Airlines for there sever.

Dave

Even though I did not get to fly too, it sure looked like fun.

One thing I would like to point out is that please and please, if you are new to this, please contact me before trying to connect to our server. There are certain things that need to be sorted out first if you are behind a router.

There will be no problem whatsoever, if I don't fly or connect to the server but if I want to fly with you guys, you guys need to be configured correctly first. This is because I host the server and my FS9 shares the same ports in the router. If you are not configured right, the data you send to my computer gets confused where to go, server or my FS9!! Thus, it can't connect, it just gives up.

And if you have no authority to control your LAN ( as in Ken and Rods), then please let me know as well. In that case we will have to use someone else's server (red airlines). It works just good except we can not have customized weather.

Hope this clears up the confusion to you all and hopefully we will get turnarounds as good as today.

cheers,
Naresh

Am I too late to join this flight? Who's got the flight plan? What aircraft we using? I don't see anyone on the ramp? Do I have the time wrong?

Yes folks...that's our Steve...a day late, and $1300 short.