[Sat Jun 16] PE Event: TRIPLE THREAT

[Keith Smith]

Saturday Jun 16
Part 1: 1-2pm PDT (2000-2100 zulu)
Part 2: 2-3pm PDT (2100-2200 zulu)

Prepare yourself for a new type of event: an event that brings pattern work, airport proximity, air traffic density and a variety of instrument approaches together into one. Prepare yourself for PilotEdge's "Triple Threat" event.

Unlike PilotEdge's past events that have had designated routes and destinations, this one is more of a free-for-all, with a catch...the three featured airports are all within 35 square-miles of each other. Located in Southern California's San Fernando Valley, Burbank Airport (KBUR), Whiteman Airport (KWHP) and famous Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) are three very popular airports for general aviation pilots.

"Triple Threat" is a two-part, two hour, event. During the first hour of the event, Van Nuys Airport is being featured for pattern work only. Load up at the ramp at Van Nuys and enjoy a flooded pattern on the parallel runways for an hour as you see and hear more traffic on the network than you ever have before!

During the second hour of the event, Whiteman and Burbank Airports will be available for pattern work, VFR departures, arrivals or practice approaches, or IFR approaches. In the spirit of the event, whether you do it IFR or VFR, hop around between Van Nuys, Whiteman and Burbank!

Finally, if you are in the mood for some instrument approaches during that second and final hour, you will not be disappointed. Between the three airports there are 15 different instrument approaches to choose from. Anything from an ILS approach, an RNAV approach, an LDA approach and many more!

So don't miss out on the two hour window of fun: Saturday June 16th.

[TexFly]

Cool! Hopefully a lot of pilots will show up!

Thanks Keith.

[Zebra]

6am on Sunday for me.

Will do my best to make it

[matt]

An event I may actually be able to attend! I will try my best after I get back from Vertical Challenge at San Carlos, KSQL. Anyone else attending Vertical Challenge?

[Orest Skrypuch]

Haven't been on the network for a bit, will try to make this one.

* Orest

[RiteFlyer]

I hope all those involved will be willing to tolerate a test pilot! I usually would be flying from my pc in my home office, but have changed to my home-built sim in the garage (used a 172 fuselage). Still working on the display system, but for now I’ve got it stable enough to fly regular VFR flights with a monitor in the panel and TrackIR (X-Plane v9).

Cessna Sim- recycled C172

cessna_sim.JPG (133.21 KiB) Viewed 8297 times

Hopefully it won’t be too hot in the garage to join you guys- so far all testing is successful. I do have a question though-- how does everyone handle connection losses? Just curious. I haven’t had much of an issue, but occasionally my router flips out.

[Keith Smith]

That was a blast! The recordings should make for good listening over at VNY (119.30).

I will post the specific recordings later but if anyone is up for sharing their flying experience, please do!

[Keith Smith]

Nice looking sim you have there. That could be the beginning of something pretty cool!

Regarding disconnections, if your router flips out and restarts, or you lose your net connection, you'll be disconnected from the network and you'll hear a voice prompt (assuming you have text to speech enabled in X-Plane's sound menu) saying "disconnected." At that point, you'll need to reconnect to the network again (it doesn't automatically reconnect).

[theskunk]

Keith and all ATC'ers who helped make this happen, I've gotta give some GREAT props to you -- that was amazing fun!

I was unfortunately forced to join a bit late when everybody was doing flights to/from/between vny/etc, however there was a solid 5-6 planes in the loop when I first started. There seemed to be a great mix of new people, medium people, and true experience on the radio, which I'm sure was intimidating for some, but great for them to hear how the rest do it. It was my first heavy traffic experience with dual runways and dual patters in use, having to watch for an airplane that turned base almost abeam me, and making sure I turn final right when I'm supposed to and don't drift into the other runways final path.

Wx in FSX was a bit, uhm, interesting, and frankly the Ground mapping for FSX wasn't that great (kept telling me that I didn't have a B, but that there was a Golf where Bravo should have been... I guess I need a scenery pack, stat!) but it was a great experience that I hope is repeated more and more often.

I would like to propose that in addition to the focus fields, one is potentially made a 'pattern airport' with a 'suggestion of the hour' to be in use -- that could make it very interesting for inbound aircraft from an additional field to get into the pattern, do their thing, and get down, or get up and out, while having several other aircraft in the mix.

[RiteFlyer]

Thanks Keith,

Still a work in progress... Sorry I was unable to join after an hour of trying, everything works fine but connecting to PilotEdge. I had installed VSPro files in the proper location (X-Plane) but when I click “connect” under plugins/VSPro the dialog box won’t appear, the dropdown menu just closes, and the option to connect/disconnect is grayed out. . Also I’m not getting verbal or speech in X-Plane, even though it is turned on under the sound menu. This all works from my other PC - still figuring things out with the sim pc. May have to reinstall X-Plane (9.70).

Anyway, I’ll bet that was tons of fun! I agree with theskunk - it would be nice to have a “pattern field” established.