Pilot Introductions

[PurdueKev]

Hello - my name is Kevin, and I started my two-week free trial last week. I had been looking for a decent voice ATC add-on or service to make my P3D flying more realistic, and I heard a podcast interview with Keith that convinced me to give PE a shot. Did some flights over the holiday weekend, and it was such a great experience I went ahead and signed up without waiting for the trial period to expire! Vatsim was intriguing but I did not care for the text message aspect especially for CTAF (how do you fly a plane and type/text at the same time???), and VoxATC was a bit hokey. PE was exactly what I was looking for - very professional and realistic.

I am a Director of R&D at a medical device company, and I have a background in Materials Engineering. I have always loved aviation and airplanes, but I never had any sort of family connection to aviation and never followed that path as a career, so my only real exposure to flying has been through flight-simming. The next thing on my bucket list though is to get my pilot's license, so while I patiently drop hints to my family that I would REALLY like an introductory flying lesson as a Christmas gift, I am using Prepar3D as a platform to hopefully learn a bit more about aircraft systems and practice some of the skills I am sure I will need. Also, as a father with a 9-yr-old girl who is fascinated by weather and a 6-yr-old son who is obsessed with anything that has an engine, I am using the simulator to help satisfy some of their curiosity as well.

The closest I have ever been to a real cockpit while in the air is sitting in the first row of a little Midwest Express Beech turboprop where I could look over the pilot's shoulder, but I do enjoy listening to LiveATC.net in the car (KMDW and KVNY are my favorites) and it is always amazing to listen to really good ATC controllers and pilots doing their thing over the radio. My first flight last weekend on PE, I felt like I was actually solo-ing it was so nerve-wracking! But I made it through and I have done a few flights around the less busy parts of ZLA so far. Looking forward to taking advantage of this service quite a bit more! I tend to fly the American Champion Scout or Cessna 177B in P3D, and I just installed the Cherokee and the Cessna 310 so I will be probably out and about in those as well.

In my spare time I love to ski, road bike, play soccer, golf, and enjoy good wine. As you can tell from my screen name I did graduate from a little university in the midwest that you may have heard of , so if there are any other Boilermakers out there please feel free to say hello by PM!

[Marcus Becker]

Welcome to the community! I know one current Boilermaker amongst us but I'll let him chime in if he likes. Have fun and enjoy your time with us!

[Scott Medeiros]

Welcome Kevin, and I'm sure being from Athens you're happy that you can now root for a team with a chance at making the playoffs, GO DAWGS!

By using a flight simulator and coupling it with live ATC you will have a huge advantage as a student when you do start taking flight lessons. In the end it will save you a lot of money (it's much cheaper to learn and make mistakes here than while burning AVgas and paying for an instructor), and you and your instructor can focus on the flying. ZLA airspace can be very challenging and hectic or very relaxing and scenic, it really has a variety not seen anywhere else in the US.

Again, welcome to the community and use the forums for any questions or comments you have. They are a wealth of information and entertainment.

-Scott

[HRutila]

Welcome to the community! I know one current Boilermaker amongst us but I'll let him chime in if he likes. Have fun and enjoy your time with us!

Already did

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4356#p27787

[PurdueKev]

Welcome Kevin, and I'm sure being from Athens you're happy that you can now root for a team with a chance at making the playoffs, GO DAWGS!

By using a flight simulator and coupling it with live ATC you will have a huge advantage as a student when you do start taking flight lessons. In the end it will save you a lot of money (it's much cheaper to learn and make mistakes here than while burning AVgas and paying for an instructor), and you and your instructor can focus on the flying. ZLA airspace can be very challenging and hectic or very relaxing and scenic, it really has a variety not seen anywhere else in the US.

Again, welcome to the community and use the forums for any questions or comments you have. They are a wealth of information and entertainment.

-Scott

Hi Scott - great to see someone else from Georgia! Alas, I long ago accepted that my alma mater is bound only for occasional gridiron glory. My wife is a Missouri alum though, so last year I did get to root for the SEC East champs

[tshuff]

Welcome aboard and Boiler Up. I guess that makes three of us now .

[smckillop]

I started flight simming seriously with X-Plane 10 about a year and a half ago after joining a virtual airline. As a flight simulation pilot with absolutely no real-world training, the learning curve on understanding how to fly the plane, read charts, understand the instruments, and follow a flight plan was steep. Through my time with the VA, I learned a lot but was doing all of my flying offline.

I wanted to add additional realism to my flights and started the process of trying to learn about Air Traffic Control communications and flying online. I experimented a little bit with the free online services but could never get the hang of who I was supposed to be talking to and when. I was having an extremely difficult time becoming comfortable with flying online so I stopped flying online for a number of months. My personality is one where I like to have a plan and understand everything about what I'm doing before I start.

I was eagerly awaiting the release of a Boeing 737-200 for X-Plane and found a pre-release Twitch stream where the plane was shown off while flying shared cockpit online using PilotEdge. I was instantly hooked with the end-to-end ATC coverage, and the proficiency of the controllers and pilots. I started following a number of Twitch streamers who use Pilot Edge and tuned in whenever I could. I paid extremely close attention to their communication and started to become more confident that I could fly on Pilot Edge with a little bit of work.

I started watching the Pilot Edge Workshops and became hooked on learning about VFR. The workshops taught me more about flying than you can imagine. The fact that Keith put those workshops together and provides them for free is astonishing. After the VFR workshops I started looking at sectional charts and trying to plan flights in my head wondering how I would go about doing the flight with ATC.

A little over 3 months ago I decided I'd sign up and get a subscription. My first flights were pretty nerve wracking. I remember sitting on the ramp at Oceano for 20 minutes trying to build up the courage to hit the push to talk button.... And that was a non-towered field! After completing a whole bunch of really simple flights, I completed my V1-V3 ratings.

I then started flying on PilotEdge using Flight Sim Economy. This forced me to fly routes based on where jobs took me, and into airspace I may have otherwise avoided. My first VFR trek through the LAX BRAVO on the mini-route before landing at Long Beach was an accomplishment I still smile about. I haven't progressed into doing many IFR flights but that will come.

My experience on PE has been awesome and without the patience and help of the controllers, I'd still be sitting on the ramp at Oceano waiting to hit the push to talk button. Thanks to PilotEdge my interest in aviation has turned into a passion!

[Cyrus]

Great testimony! I agree with so much of what you said. Well, pretty much everything, really.

...My first flights were pretty nerve wracking. I remember sitting on the ramp at Oceano for 20 minutes trying to build up the courage to hit the push to talk button.... And that was a non-towered field!

Oh wow. Yes! This was me too!!

By the way, I'm not much further along than you, but I can tell you that I'm actually LESS nervous and stressed when I'm flying IFR on PE. I've heard a lot of other pilots (rw and sim) say the same thing as well.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the workshops and have fun working your way through the PE training program. It's all great stuff.

[joherty]

Hi folks.

My name is John and I live in Ireland. I've been fascinated by aviation since I was a child. I've been using flight sims for about 10 years now and use X-Plane 10 exclusively at the moment.
I have a few hours real world experience which i intend to get back to again when finances allow.

I have used some of the other ATC services for flight simming and was just blown away at the professionalism and reliability of PilotEdge. Its such a good service.

Hope to hear some of you guys from time to time over the radios.

[TimAbbott]

Hi All,

I've posted already in a couple other spots and an introduction is finally in order. I did my two week trial and loved it. I took the plunge today and handed Keith my plastic I've been simming off and on since FS98. My other main sim is iRacing so I tend to jump back and forth as I feel like it. I have several hours of actual instruction and last year I really thought about making a career out of aviation but like many the cost to income ratio didn't match up.

I've been an avgeek since I was a kid, my grandfather had a big role in that as well. I've been on Vatsim for years and even did some controlling there as a student.

In the FS world I fly for a virtual airline when I need a heavy metal fix but mainly I use FSEconomy and have since 2008.

Looking forward to getting to know more people around here!!!