A helping hand
To assist pilots in their first flight vaccsac have created different tutorial flights.
These tutorials covers what is being said - when and why. So you can use it step-by-step when doing a flight.
The objective is to guide you trough an online flight and show you, that it not is that difficult at all. It's not to teach you how to fly the aircraft or how to navigate. So when using these tutorials make sure you have understood the basics about navigation, phraseology and that you fly an aircraft that you know well so you can concentrate on learning how to fly on-line.
The Vaccsca tutorial flights are pretty straight forward. There are different tutorials between different airports. You can choose the one you would like to fly and/or the one with ATC online along the way. They are more or less the same level in difficulty, but contain information about arriving or departing to the airports used. This should give you a good knowledge about these airports in the future.
Turorial flight 1 - Oslo-Stockholm
Fly "Scandinavian 498" from Oslo Gardermoen to Stockholm Arlanda. Thsi covers a normal IFR flight between two of the major hubs in Scandinavia. It uses normal SIDs and STARs with vectoring.
Turorial flight 2 - Stockholm-Copenhagen
Fly "Scandinavian 401" from Stockholm Arlanda to Copenhagen Kastrup. This covers a normal IFR flight between two of the major hubs in Scandinavia. It uses normal SIDs and STARs with vectoring, runway crossing at Copenahgen.
Turorial flight 3 - Copenhagen-Oslo
Fly "Sterling 110" from Copenhagen Kastrup to Oslo Gardermoen. Thsi covers a normal IFR flight between two of the major hubs in Scandinavia. It uses SIDs and STARs and shows runway crossing in Copenhagen.
Tutorial - Oslo-Trondheim
This flight with the "DHL 36" is a very good and learn full flight for pilots new to online flight.
It explains in an easy-to-understand-language how to plan your flight and what is going on doing the flight
This tutorial is highly recommended to all new pilots.
The number of avalible controlers
In these tutorials the airpors are almost fully staffed with ATC. This covers the Ground position the Tower and Approach. When you make your flight there might not be that many ATCs online. You then need to contact the "next controller avalible". The "hierarchy" is like this: Delivery -> Ground -> Tower -> Approach -> Center -> Unicom.
So if Gound isn't avalibe you call Tower. If Tower isn't avalible you call Approach. And so on. If no ATC is avalible use Unicom. Read more about it here: Section 1 > ATC hierarchy.
Only thing we would ask of you, is to have a sound judgement of your own abilities - when new to this, tell the ATC you are a newbie, tell him if you don't have charts. It makes it a lot easier for all of us, if we realise our soft spots. Nothing frustrates an ATC more than giving a clearance, gets it confirmed from the pilot - and then sees him wander off in an other direct than called for. And don't do your first online flight at an evening, when we have a fly-in from all over the world. At this time ATC have more than their hands full - we are not pros either and can loose track of things, when things get complicated. At such times ATC finds it difficult to give extensive help to a newbie. A better thing for you to do is to sit and listening to the radiotraffic and get a feel for it.
In the tutorials:
Your communication is in BLUE
ATCs communication is in RED
Other aircrafts communication is in GREEN
Real life and vatsim
Even though we try to do things as close as possible to real life, some messages are slightly altered to adhere to VATSIM and not reallife procedures. Also to keep the level of difficulty to a minimum.
If you encounter problems or just have a question please don’t hesitate to ask at the vaccsca forum
Happy landings and see you online
