Take the California Screaming 13 Pilot Survey

    Fellow VATSIM members,

    On behalf of the controllers at the Los Angeles (ZLA) and Oakland (ZOA) ARTCCs, I'd like to thank everyone who took part in the California Screaming event on Sunday August 22, 2010. This includes not just the pilots who flew in the sky but also the California controllers, neighboring facilities that opened up to support us, the supervisors who were on hand to help everyone out, and the entire planning committee for the event. I only managed to check VatSpy near the start and end of the event window - and during both there were over 40 controllers connected and 150 pilots flying in California. Not bad for a six hour window!

    The first California Screaming event was held on June 10, 2001 and by September 2004 we had already held our tenth CalScream! At its peak we saw over 400 pilots signup for flights from an available 850. The event nearly turned into a "West Coast Scream" for a few years as it featured flights out of ZSE, ZAB, ZDV, ZLC and included flights from as far away as Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific. It's hard to believe that since then we've only held the event in 2006, 2007, and now CS13 in 2010.

    The purpose of the event has always been to simulate distributed traffic ratios across the region rather than a conga line into one airport. By distributing the traffic we're able to give more controllers a piece of the action, while focusing on a small chunk of sky as opposed to a few controllers dealing with an overwhelming amount of traffic. We've also aimed to answer one of the most often asked questions all pilots "Where should I fly today?" by providing them with all of the information required to fly to/from a new destination. By also giving them a callsign, aircraft type, and pushback time (all optional) we like to think that we've added a "coolness" factor since the flights were all taken recent real world schedules. By having people "sign up" for flights - we are able to analyze the anticipated traffic loads in advance and deploy our resources where required.

    Having held only three of these events over the past six years we realize that the community has changed. We don't really know if the concept of a CalScream event is interesting to pilots anymore. Some VAs all want to fly routes from and to their hubs on their own schedules rather than the event schedule. Some pilots like to only use routes gathered from flightaware, others want to fly their equipment type only, and of course some prefer to fly a conga line with a bunch of their friends. We only had 120 pilots sign up for this event so we'd like to understand if this is because people don't like to sign up, don't like the sign up system, didn't know about it, couldn't find a flight they wanted, or some other reason.

    In an attempt to gather as much information as possible regarding what the pilots in the community want from an event - we invite you to partake in the California Screaming 13 Pilot Survey. After we've gathered the information it is our hope to tweak the CalScream event as required so that we can provide the community with an event that is as appealing as possible.

    Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and provide your input.

 Click here to take the California Screaming 13 Pilot Survey

OUCHHHHHH!  Major pawnage!

Jonah,

Some people who create duplicate accounts are in fact not doing it with any bad intentions (to cause disruptions or circumvent "corrective" measures taken against them).

BW was only trying to educate the member - not berate him as a "major pawnage" (many here have no clue what that means).

If we all ignored or put down everyone who asked for help - there wouldn't be any network to speak of.

I am a firm believer that if, over the past 10 years, VATUSA did a better job of overseeing its facilities and ATMs specifically, and took the necessary action when required - then we would never have needed policies such as the GRP or those regarding visitors, transfers, and removals.

We need a VATUSA Director, but it needs to be someone with Leadership, Communication, and Vision.
We need VATUSA RTDs, but they need to be people who will monitor, collaborate, and provide guidance for the facilities they are responsible for. They must also be able to remove an ATM as required.
We need a VATUSA Training Director, but it needs to be someone who can administer a training program and provide the division with much needed materials (like the one that just resigned)
We need a supporting VATUSA staff to keep the web site running, answer questions, and maintain the events calendar - but in all cases they should act as a supporting resource only.

I was quite pleased with what I was seeing with the previous administration, and have a hard time believing that we will see that level of communication, collaboration, and advocacy in the near future. The senior staff at our facility is becoming quietly concerned about what might happen without an advocate at the VATUSA level to communicate with the EC/BOG on our behalf.

Does anyone know of a place where VSCS can be downloaded? I appears that the homepage of the program is down.

It's built into both VRC and ASRC (unless I'm missing something). I think in VRC it is called the "Comms Panel".

I still have the entire ZAK website if anyone is interested in bringing it back to life again.

(reprinted from another forum)

Not only do I fail to see the value in the strip bay, I also find that they negatively impact my ability to control.

I control with only a single monitor. I've found that the two monitors actually reduces my effectiveness and negatively impacts my scan.
 
 I have the Controller List, the Arrival/Departure list, and the incoming chat log boxes open on the right side of my screen.
 
I can always see when an aircraft shows up for a departure with a flightplan in my ARR/DEP list and to take a look I will use the code <asel> F6 <asel> for the full flight strip.
 
At all other times I simply depend on the information listed at the bottom of the Arr/Dep list when someone is selected. This shows me their assigned code, current code, departure, destination, and cruise altitude. If it is a departure coming from tower I can rely on their datatag to tell me where to send them as far as a SID goes.
 
I suppose that I personally don't see the value in the flight strip bay. I don't rely on strips being passed to me, I rely on pilots calling me or getting a handoff from someone else. As far as priorities go in terms of stacking the strips - my priority is about as static as time itself - as soon as I had them stacked in priority sequency it would have to be completely restacked.

I'm having some trouble with the ATM transfer panel.

When rejecting a transfer, I get a validation warning telling me to put comments in (I did). Clicking reject a second time simply reloads the entire roster in the popup window. It doesn't appear that the transfer reject is working. I did manage to accept one earlier in the week with no problems that I can recall.

I'd recommend that we modify the rejection process a bit if possible. I do recommend we keep the comments as required so that there is some audit trail going on.

I haven't poked around much else, but I will again say thank you for all the hard work on the site.