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Messages - Alex Ying

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Events / Re: [9/10/2021 2300z - 0300z] The JFK FNO
« on: August 24, 2021, 09:13:41 AM »
Granted I am not a controller in zdc or zbw, perhaps Dylan could shed more light into the AAR of ORF, but a quick at the ground chart, it doesn’t look pretty for those airports. Perhaps IAD and BOS would’ve been better choices for the traffic and take some stress off your neighbors.

This was coordinated with the events teams at ZDC and ZBW, we did not unilaterally decide this. As ATC facilities, we're still subjected to the whims of pilots flying on the network in terms of where the traffic ends up going. Not including BOS in fact helps ZBW because over the past 1.5 years, any time BOS has been in an multi-field event, it ends up taking 60+% of the traffic, even with other big name fields like JFK involved. We're trying to avoid situations where a neighbor ends up doing more work than the host facility.

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The Control Room Floor / Re: Pilot Expectations, cont...
« on: July 06, 2021, 12:35:29 PM »
I'll preface this by saying 75+% (perhaps even more) of pilots I see on the network while controlling are great. They know their stuff, or if they run into something where they don't, they know where to find information or how to ask for help and are receptive to feedback.

However, those that don't fall into that category can be so distracting that it completely outweighs the positive enjoyment I get. There's been some research on things like this and on average, people perceive bad experiences about 3-4 times worse than equivalent good experiences. It only takes one bad pilot to completely ruin a controlling session because we're in the unfortunate circumstance where a competent pilot is almost unnoticeable compared to a bad pilot who can't turn the right direction, or hold a heading, or even give readbacks. Our bad experiences, even before accounting for perception, are worse than good experiences.

In the past week in about 6 hours of online time, I've seen instances of
  • Missing the first call for an instruction every time. Every single instruction took 2 calls
  • Multiple instances of pilots having an amended route in their flight plan (presumably they read it back at some point, they came from controlled fields), but flying something completely different. On asking them, they event sent back the correct route that matched their flight plan, but for whatever reason they never bothered to reprogram their aircraft
  • A stuck mic for 5+ minutes and the pilot not responding to anything via text

These are just the occurrences that stand out because they were more obnoxious than usual. On top of that, there's the tons of unresponsive or AFK pilots, and the usual lack of chart-reading or improper FMS programming or not knowing how to hand-fly a departure procedure. We've collectively just come to accept these, but why? All of the lack of pilot competencies increases controller workload. I regularly have to message neighboring controllers asking if they got a pilot on comms because they don't even reliably read back comms transfers.

Until there is a robust means of enforcing stuff that's already in the CoC (B8 for example), I'm not convinced a change in the CoC or other network rules will be effective. What happens after I wallop someone? Usually a SUP contacts me and says they're on it and after some time the pilot either calls me or gets disconnected. If they get disconnected, then is there a follow-up action? I would hope so, but as a regular member of the network, I have no visibility into that, and I don't have way to know that action is in fact being taken. Suppose they do call me, this is actually sometimes more of a problem because more likely than not, the reason I had to call a SUP to begin with was because they don't know what they're doing. I may now have someone who I have to hand-hold, or someone who is barely responsive, or in the worst case, someone who is actively causing problems on my frequency (stuck mic, or has bad radio etiquette, or is actively hostile towards me).

I'm sure I don't have the best solutions to these problems, but from the perspective of a regular controlling member, it doesn't look like management/governance at the VATSIM level really cares about the controller perspective. Every time I've seen a forum thread on this (usually on the VATSIM forums), discussion about stricter enforcement of rules gets shut down or brushed aside. I think stricter enforcement of the rules we currently have would go a long way to making things better. Give controllers the confidence that when they do report something, that something longer-term than just kicking the pilot off the network is being done.

Controllers tend to be the most skilled and highly trained people on the network simply because we have to go through all this training. Empower us and put more trust in us to do the right thing. I shouldn't have to send 3+ messages to a SUP describing in depth what the problem is to get a problematic pilot kicked (this is rare, but if it does happen, and I'm very busy I often can be covering en-route top-down, it's very annoying). Give us a way to report pilot deviations that don't require calling a SUP in. While annoying, I can work around someone who lands on the wrong runway or doesn't join the localizer. I don't want to go through the wallop rigmarole nor do I want to waste SUPs' time with things that are smaller infractions but infractions nonetheless. (As an aside, why is it that when I connect with the wrong vis range, I almost instantly get a message from a SUP, but it can take 5-10+ minutes to get a problematic pilot removed? Is this an automation issue? If so, all the more reason to empower controllers. Let us help the supervisors.)

Having a pilot record would also, in my opinion, go a long way towards creating stronger incentives for pilots to actually read and learn the material in the pilot resource and learning centers. Right now, once you pass the entrance exam, you can get away with learning nothing else and if you don't care, all the encouragement and asking nicely from other people isn't going to do anything (leading a horse to water vs. getting it to drink and all that).

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The Flight Deck / Re: Back into VATSIM After a Long Break ... A Few Q's
« on: November 07, 2020, 05:19:22 PM »
  • Many major airports now have surface radars (ASDE-X) that use the Mode C read-out from the transponder to show aircraft position on taxiways. This is indicated on the airport diagrams as well. Oftentimes, aircraft will push back and once they are holding short of a taxiway, turn on Mode C.
  • You should always report altitude or flight level when checking in with a new controller. For departures where a controller is covering top-down, it's still a good habit to report airborne with an altitude.
  • Choosing where to park is entirely up to you. A lot of people will try to simulate realism and park where their real-world counterpart parks. You can find this on airport or airline websites as well as on Wikipedia pages for the airports (typically these indicate which terminal). However, you're free to ask to park wherever, including asking for the nearest parking and ground control will direct you there.
    Each airport operates differently in regards to the interplay between ground and ramp. If it's a big event and there's a pilot briefing, that will describe how you should plan to operate. Otherwise, just ask and they will let you know what you need to do.

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Can we move past the 122.800 for everything and use the actual SFRA frequencies already.

Not sure if you're referencing this event specifically or VATUSA/VATSIM generally, but the posted SFRA guide has the actual SFRA CTAF frequencies listed in them.

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General Discussion / Re: Changes to FNOs for the time being
« on: April 13, 2020, 09:50:46 PM »
Quote
I think it might be interesting to staff up several airports in a certain area, maybe several underlooked class C airports. Events featuring a regional night around JAN (ZME), MLU (ZFW), BTR (ZHU), TLH (ZJX), and BHM (ZTL).

Its not about having something interesting.  Its about what to do with the influx of traffic that we are seeing during FNO's because more members are at home in self isolation due to this Corona Virus Pandemic.

The multiple airports staffed in my theoretical event would help spread out the traffic into more manageable levels. Events that crossfire between two airports tends to build horrendous "congo lines" that clog up the works. Having four or five airports to create a 'regional night' could be an exciting way to mitigate the increased traffic levels at underexposed locations. Hopefully, the resulting traffic will be more manageable, with 300 pilots split between 5 airports instead of 2. I suggested these particular airports as an example; the purpose still being to spread out the traffic to help solve the main issue.

The Northeast Corridor FNOs have been pretty successful the past couple years, does a decent job of spreading planes out over 3 airports / TRACONS. In the current environment, though, I'd agree we would want more than just 3 airports.

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I was one of the two final approach controllers at PHL for the event tonight, so I can say firsthand that we landed probably 20+ GA aircraft (props and jets, even a Cessna 172 at one point). We were not denying anyone the opportunity to land at PHL as far as I know.

As everyone else has pointed out, trying to do multiple practice approaches (regardless of whether it's IFR or VFR) into an airport that has an arrival demand of 200+ runs counter to the safe and efficient management of the airspace as is explicitly laid out in the 7110.65. If you want to fly in, we'll accommodate you, but it's not fair to the community as a whole for one aircraft to use up multiple landing slots when we could serve many more planes by using them all for full-stop landings.

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The Flight Deck / Re: Controller frequencies
« on: December 06, 2019, 04:10:01 PM »
To add on to this, at some places (like New York TRACON, for example), sectors can be combined even in regular operations (outside of events) in different ways. There isn't an over-arching "NY_APP" callsign for New York, you'll always see something like NY_CAM_APP or NY_LSO_DEP online. Those are sector names, using the real sector frequencies, but they may have multiple sectors combined onto them. The best policy is to check the controller info and if in doubt, just ask what their coverage and who you should contact for service.

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News / Re: ZNY Has a New ATM!
« on: February 09, 2019, 01:17:37 PM »
Congratulations Karl!

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General Discussion / Re: Discussion about sector IDs
« on: August 24, 2017, 01:40:05 PM »
If I may add my 2 cents, from a TRACON perspective, in a very complex airspace like N90, being able to seamlessly split and combine sectors is very useful. The coverage in N90 is constantly changing with people coming online or logging off and with controllers holding different certifications at the N90 sectors. Having consistent sector names that don't change depending on situation (event or non-event) facilitates this system.

I've never run into an issue with telling a pilot to contact another controller. I've also seen many pilots be proactive and ask who to call. I think the issue of calling the wrong sector initially is a bit overblown, it's not that much work to send them to the right frequency. Additionally, with a system that doesn't change (NY_CAM_APP will always be that, but subsectors RBR_APP can be split off of it) lets pilots learn the system. Eventually, they do know that if I'm flying into Kennedy, I should call CAM.

We actually have a mix of "descriptive" and "cryptic" (from a pilot's perspective) sector names/callsigns at N90. If you saw NY_KEN_DEP, NY_NWK_DEP, NY_LSO_DEP all online, you can probably guess who covers Kennedy, Newark, and Laguardia. That's not so much the case with NY_CAM_APP, NY_ARD_APP, NY_HRP_APP.

Regardless though, Daniel does have a point with his E/W vs 78/83. Say I'm sitting at Teterboro. It's about equally far from Laguardia and Newark. As a pilot, how do I know whether to call NWK or LSO? Knowing the NWK covers Newark and LSO covers Laguardia is absolutely useless to me.

I think that having logon names that represent true sectors is the best policy. CAM for example, is a single sector in N90. When the other Kenendy sectors are not online, it covers them as well. But CAM also refers to a single subsector. You'll never have to change away from the CAM callsign to something else when you do a sector split (say RBR comes online). As long as which subsector is the "primary" when no other subsectors are online is consistent, then the pilots see a consistent ATC presence and can learn the nomenclature. Anyone who's flown into NY with approach online more than a couple times would know that CAM is the Kennedy primary sector.

That's one of the things I think Daniel was talking about with the compass namings. Say you need to split the "E" sector, how do you do so consistently if you don't have other subsectors also already named in the same format? Is seeing "E", "EL", "EH" that much more descriptive for a pilot? As someone who's never controlled ZHU, I for sure wouldn't know who to call if I saw those.

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General Discussion / Re: VATUSA 24 hour time lapse (6/16/2017)
« on: June 30, 2017, 10:09:00 PM »
If you're still taking requests, a time-lapse of Northeast Corridor from tonight (6/29) would be cool to see.

11
What's the best / canonical way to send text messages on 122.8 from VRC? I haven't really been able to find documentation on it. Does it work to set it in the comms panel without any voice server or channel info?

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Events / Re: VATUSA Town Hall Meeting
« on: September 28, 2016, 06:40:48 PM »
Alex, not sure why that is...  I can download it and it looks like 16 others have already downloaded it so far.

Interesting, it seems to have somehow auto-magically appeared now.

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Events / Re: VATUSA Town Hall Meeting
« on: September 28, 2016, 12:05:07 AM »
I saw the post in the Division Updates forum that contains the slide deck, but it appears I can't download the attachment. I can see a little paperclip, but no clickable links. It'd be great if that could also be posted with the recording.

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