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The Flight Deck / Re: MOST VATSIM pilots will mess this up. Are you one of them?
« Last post by Shane VanHoven on March 09, 2024, 10:22:32 PM »Christopher,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I truly do admire your level of self awareness in this topic. I'm grateful that it appears that you learned something at the event.
This IS a hobby. I completely agree. But the reality is our hobby is unbalanced. The air traffic controller side of this hobby requires hundreds of hours of training and self study to become proficient enough to work event-level traffic well. Controllers are equally entitled to network enjoyment as the pilot that messes up procedures. The problem is, the pilot that messes up the procedures is affecting the enjoyment for not only the controller that they're talking to, but every adjacent controller, and every other pilot on frequency that has to listen to the controller hand-hold.
I do not expect VATSIM pilots to operate at the level of a real world airline pilot. My expectation for every VATSIM pilot is the same expectation I set for myself when I was 13 years old and scared to start flying on the network: To be good enough that I wouldn't need to be taught procedures on the frequency. That took exactly 10 minutes per flight pre-briefing my route. Anything that looked weird would be researched until I figured it out. Heck, sometimes I would file a flightplan as /A (no GPS) because I was scared to be assigned a new route and unable to change my FS9 flightplan in the GPS. I worked within my means. I didn't go to busy events at first because I wasn't confident that I could participate without getting in the way other other participants. Sometimes I would look at a weird chart and get so flustered that I'd run back to the FSX online server and just do barrel rolls and buzz the tower in my Extra 300.
We are working traffic levels that sometimes exceed real world right now. I was watching the real LAX while I was at work tonight and there wasn't a single moment that they had to merge two FULL streams of traffic on the ANJLL and HLYWD arrivals. We were doing that almost all night during the FNO. It gets so precise that mistakenly going direct HUNDA actually messes up the spacing on the final. Us controllers volunteer our time so that pilots like you can enjoy events like this. If we don't hold ourselves to higher standards, you will not continue to have competent controllers for years to come. We will get burnt out, and we will find other hobbies faster than we can train the next generation of controllers.
Some people knit for their hobby. Do you think it would be fun to knit a sweater that doesn't stay together for more than a day?
Some people fix cars for their hobby. Do you think they would be satisfied if they did an oil change on their 69 Corvette and put the wrong oil in it because they didn't bother to look up the right oil?
Some people find a hobby in baking. Would a hobbyist baker be happy if they forgot to set a timer on the oven and burnt their bread?
Some people do VATSIM for their hobby. Why wouldn't we want to be good at our hobby?
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I truly do admire your level of self awareness in this topic. I'm grateful that it appears that you learned something at the event.
This IS a hobby. I completely agree. But the reality is our hobby is unbalanced. The air traffic controller side of this hobby requires hundreds of hours of training and self study to become proficient enough to work event-level traffic well. Controllers are equally entitled to network enjoyment as the pilot that messes up procedures. The problem is, the pilot that messes up the procedures is affecting the enjoyment for not only the controller that they're talking to, but every adjacent controller, and every other pilot on frequency that has to listen to the controller hand-hold.
I do not expect VATSIM pilots to operate at the level of a real world airline pilot. My expectation for every VATSIM pilot is the same expectation I set for myself when I was 13 years old and scared to start flying on the network: To be good enough that I wouldn't need to be taught procedures on the frequency. That took exactly 10 minutes per flight pre-briefing my route. Anything that looked weird would be researched until I figured it out. Heck, sometimes I would file a flightplan as /A (no GPS) because I was scared to be assigned a new route and unable to change my FS9 flightplan in the GPS. I worked within my means. I didn't go to busy events at first because I wasn't confident that I could participate without getting in the way other other participants. Sometimes I would look at a weird chart and get so flustered that I'd run back to the FSX online server and just do barrel rolls and buzz the tower in my Extra 300.
We are working traffic levels that sometimes exceed real world right now. I was watching the real LAX while I was at work tonight and there wasn't a single moment that they had to merge two FULL streams of traffic on the ANJLL and HLYWD arrivals. We were doing that almost all night during the FNO. It gets so precise that mistakenly going direct HUNDA actually messes up the spacing on the final. Us controllers volunteer our time so that pilots like you can enjoy events like this. If we don't hold ourselves to higher standards, you will not continue to have competent controllers for years to come. We will get burnt out, and we will find other hobbies faster than we can train the next generation of controllers.
Some people knit for their hobby. Do you think it would be fun to knit a sweater that doesn't stay together for more than a day?
Some people fix cars for their hobby. Do you think they would be satisfied if they did an oil change on their 69 Corvette and put the wrong oil in it because they didn't bother to look up the right oil?
Some people find a hobby in baking. Would a hobbyist baker be happy if they forgot to set a timer on the oven and burnt their bread?
Some people do VATSIM for their hobby. Why wouldn't we want to be good at our hobby?