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The Flight Deck / KORD Question from a Red-Faced Newbie
« on: January 02, 2014, 04:52:53 PM »
Hi All...
I'm an old-dog simulator pilot who has come back to flying with FSX and now Prepar3D and have only made about a half dozen flights on VATSIM. I'm too old to have ever done the on-line gaming thing as I last flew in the real world in 1985 and am frankly amazed at how nervous I get trying to get things right when flying on VATSIM. I've certainly made my share of newbie mistakes and I ask patience from those of you fortunate enough to have me in your airspace.
Anyhow, I have had two occasions now flying into KORD where I have struggled to stay ahead of the airplane and the ATC. Most recently, I ended up too fast on descent and was vectored away from the SID. Once on altitude and airspeed, the very helpful controller gave me vectors to ILS for Rwy 10L. While attempting to first aviate and then navigate, I discovered that I did not have RWY 10L in my aircraft FMC database or apparently defined in P3D. I incorrectly dialed in runway 9L thinking the reason the runway was not defined was due to magnetic precession. That clearly didn't work and I decided to spare the airspace and the controller any further suffering for my lack of prepar3dness (pun intended) and ended my flight.
This true life (simulated) example of task saturation was quite humbling and I should have stuck it out.
Now that my mea culpa is out of the way, my question for you experienced folk -- should I have simply told the controller, "Unable 10L" and requested vectors to another runway.
If every dose of humility teaches us a lesson, I now know about checking to be sure that the airport I have in my computer is the airport reflected in the current charts before flying into the airspace.
The question for this group is how should I have communicated the issue given this is not a "real world" scenario? Should I plan to add-on scenery for airports that I am planning to frequent. I hope to avoid burdening my hardware flight deck with a highly customized version of FSX and P3D to the degree possible..
Thanks in advance for the helpful forum, the community, your patience and advice...
...Robert
I'm an old-dog simulator pilot who has come back to flying with FSX and now Prepar3D and have only made about a half dozen flights on VATSIM. I'm too old to have ever done the on-line gaming thing as I last flew in the real world in 1985 and am frankly amazed at how nervous I get trying to get things right when flying on VATSIM. I've certainly made my share of newbie mistakes and I ask patience from those of you fortunate enough to have me in your airspace.
Anyhow, I have had two occasions now flying into KORD where I have struggled to stay ahead of the airplane and the ATC. Most recently, I ended up too fast on descent and was vectored away from the SID. Once on altitude and airspeed, the very helpful controller gave me vectors to ILS for Rwy 10L. While attempting to first aviate and then navigate, I discovered that I did not have RWY 10L in my aircraft FMC database or apparently defined in P3D. I incorrectly dialed in runway 9L thinking the reason the runway was not defined was due to magnetic precession. That clearly didn't work and I decided to spare the airspace and the controller any further suffering for my lack of prepar3dness (pun intended) and ended my flight.
This true life (simulated) example of task saturation was quite humbling and I should have stuck it out.
Now that my mea culpa is out of the way, my question for you experienced folk -- should I have simply told the controller, "Unable 10L" and requested vectors to another runway.
If every dose of humility teaches us a lesson, I now know about checking to be sure that the airport I have in my computer is the airport reflected in the current charts before flying into the airspace.
The question for this group is how should I have communicated the issue given this is not a "real world" scenario? Should I plan to add-on scenery for airports that I am planning to frequent. I hope to avoid burdening my hardware flight deck with a highly customized version of FSX and P3D to the degree possible..
Thanks in advance for the helpful forum, the community, your patience and advice...
...Robert