PilotEdge Forums

hey guys!!! I appreciate all your help and assistance in getting me up and going. I am having such a blast but I do have a couple more questions and I promise I am done for now! !:)

1. I know the servers are up 24/7 so if I want to fly outside of the ATC operating hours I know I will see the other pilots and drones. DO I still tune to the appropriate frequencies at the airports and treat them as UNICOMs so I can announce my location, departures, landing, etc...or are the freqs not available during the offline hours?

2. ATIS yesterday was giving KSNA departure runways as 02L and 02R however they were still operating on the PE network as departing 20L and 20R. Does the PE ATC change the departure runways to match ATIS or does PE have its own ATIS available?

Thanks all!!!

My experience:

1. I treat the ZLA airspace in PE as real life, so if I am flying outside of PE coverage times, it's like the tower is closed and I go to CTAF or UNICOM as depicted in the chart. When I get to the airspace that would normally be an approach or center position, I tune to the frequency and (sheepishly saying here), make the call that I normally would like "SoCal departure, N611CR one thousand four hundred for three thousand, runway heading." After that, I might readback mythical instructions from experience. Overall, I tend to fly VFR during off hours.

2. I tune the ATIS and use experience to determine if the runways really change if it's off hours. If it's on hours, PE has the reins and I do what they say unless I'm unable (say a crosswind component is out of range for my aircraft type).

Finally, my 2015 goal is to plan and fly PE like I would in real life, right down to virtual money, weather considerations, and aircraft limits. Sometimes that imposes artificial limits on the sim, but 'scenario-based' training is what I'm shooting for.

Off topic for PE staff: The ratings are great for scenario training--maybe we could do something similar for events?

Example:

You're a pilot that wants to take your family to an airshow at KCMA this weekend from your home airport of KSNA. PE would provide weight and balance info and suggested aircraft types. Pilots would submit the paperwork and fly the routes and scores given on the complete package, adherence to flight plan and comms and winner gets a free month of PE.

thanks for the heads up Steve! I dont usually fly outside of operating hours but I was curious how others did it. I assumed that I would just use the CTAF or UNICOM but I just wantewd to be sure. I am sure there will come a time when I will be flying "offline" so to speak.

To clarify, it's the CTAF you want to use if the tower is closed. Unicom is for something different. They are sometimes the same frequency (at non-towered airports, for example), but at towered airports, the CTAF is generally the tower frequency, whereas the UNICOM might be 122.95. You would use the Unicom to contact FBO's, request fuel, etc, not for self announcing your position in the pattern.

Regarding ATIS, your system-generated ATIS has no idea about the logic that goes into the selecting the active runway. I would ignore the runway in your system-generated ATIS and just wait for the runway assignment from ATC.

Steve,

Those are interesting ideas. Our first order of business is to try to run events on a more regular basis. A flight planning competition does sound interesting, though, we'll keep that in mind. Regarding tracking virtual dollars for flights, I would strongly suggest you check out FSEconomy if you haven't already. It's a very powerful platform when used in conjunction with PE.