Experiences with vatsim change for everyone and I would like to share mine
I started in May of 2022, I really didn’t improve til December where I got into airliners and flew long routes, When I got my new pc in march, I flew Much much more.
Only bad experience was this weekwhen some kid Was being rude to me bout the gate I was at “I don’t Care!!! (Slurs)”
Never had an issue personally. I know some controllers can get spicy if you don’t know how to operate your aircraft or listen to instructions / adhere to procedures which is understandable.
Any “troublemakers” I’ve seen get removed from the network pretty quickly.
If you do run into issues .wallop will get you a supervisor.
Currently in training to become a controller myself.
Oh nice! Former controller…too much politicicking for me…
Hello everyone, so I don’t see annoyance or rudeness as the problem at all. It’s just like in life.
It’s much more stupid for me: I look for places where at least the tower is occupied - then you fly off, which takes a little while, and when you arrive at your destination nobody is there anymore.
Happened to me so many times that I gave up because it was pointless.
I recommend flying during events,also knowing having not atc is inevitable and you just gotta live wit if
I find the east coast (Canada and US) has substantial coverage the past few months.
It’s inevitable you’ll lose coverage and that’s just a great time to practice call-outs on Unicom.
Yeah! I’m a mix of a GA/Airliner guy and i get more like gasps when they hear a 14 year old actually doing something right….in europe
I love VatSim.
When you want to experience Real Flight Simulation, with ATC, I turn to VatSim everytime.
Love the super control or you can fly in areas of no atc control and talk to your flying buddy by tuning to a unused frequency. Smile…
I often tune the standby to 123.45
Seems allot of folks use it, I’ve come across some funny guys on there.
Thanks for that Freq. tip…
Next time I am flying with a friend, we will check it out.
I used to love flying on VATSIM. Unfortunately I rarely have enough free time to do it these days but I found it a lot of fun and immersive when I did use it.
Also you would sometimes get to hear some entertaining exhanges between ATC and pilots. Such as one occasion when someone reported that their plane had gone inverted!!!
Its great for learning real ATC ops, both VFR and IFR, and is mostly very professional and accurate to real life. Many real controllers on there and everyone who is a virtual ATC knows their stuff.
Coverage varies but just use vatspy to see what centers / approaches / towers are online, and you’ll learn trends of who is usually on and when. There is some consistency and normally coverage for enough time to fly a quick realistic flight within 1 ARTCC, esp in places like SOCAL, ZJAX and ZATL. Then you have ATC the entire time. KLAS-KBUR / KSAN / KLAX or KATL-KCLT / KAVL / KGPS / KMCO / KJAX are normally possible to get ATC from pushback to pulling into the gate.
The flip side is, as a pilot, you are expected to know what real procedures are, how to comply with them, and how to fly your plane if you’re going to logon and participate. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can login as a ‘spectator’ and see / hear everything going on but no one, ATC or other pilots, will see you. Then you can learn without being in the way.
I have used both Pilotedge and VATSIM for a couple of months and now I am mostly using VATSIM.
I think Pilotedge is the best way to start using real ATC when you are somewhat new to it. They have awesome tests (ratings) that you can choose to complete, both VFR and IFR, and they cover the basics of procedures and communication. Pilotedge is also great because ATC is online every day at specific times so you know they won’t disconnect on you. You also have to tune in the right frequency and can’t just rely on a single “center” controller for the entire flight which makes it very realistic.
However, I think VATSIM is superior because of the huge community and the amount of users. This makes departures and arrivals at major airports interesting and it feels very realistic. The user base in Pilotedge is so tiny in comparison that you rarely encounter other aircraft. I also love flying regional flights in my home country and that’s where VATSIM really shines. I am fortunate enough to live in a country where VATSIM coverage is online every day in the evening.
I also find VATSIM controllers to be nice and friendly in general. Pilotedge is a less friendly environment and the controllers see it more as a job rather than a hobby that they do for fun.
My advice to newcomers is to start with Pilotedge (paid service) for a month and get to learn procedures and communication the hard way. Be prepared to be humiliated and yelled at by the controllers, you will make so many mistakes. Once you completed the ratings and learned the basics, cancel the subscription and switch to VATSIM.
I’ve been using VATSIM since 2009 and absolutely love the network. I must say though that pilot quality seems to have really tanked over the past few years and controllers are starting to give up. There are quite a number of pilots that don’t listen for their callsign, can’t follow basic CoC, step on others, don’t wait their turn to speak, don’t know their aircraft, don’t manually fly the aircraft when things go south fast, don’t use charts, end up flying routes that they initially filed but were rerouted, don’t announce intentions, ect, ect. It just can be very frustrating especially when it’s very busy. I’m going to be taking part in the FNO tonight and I wish the controllers the best.
EDIT: Sorry not FNO tonight but ZME Primetime.
I have two friends who tried Vatsim and didn’t like it because their expectations were different from what they experienced. When they heard about Vatsim, they thought it would be cool to interact with a controller to do pushback, taxi, and takeoff, then on the other end, to enter into the approach THEY EXPECTED and to land. As long as it went exactly as they expected via their flight plan, they were fine. But as Maki eluded to, when they were told to do something they didn’t expect, they became frazzled and embarrassed and backed out.
They did say that when they were online the controllers were respectful and helpful, and the other pilots were too. But I think it’s that WHOA WHAT DO I DO NOW that got to them.
VATSIM is great but mostly doesn’t work for me time-wise. I mostly play in the very late evening (around midnight) and I’m in Europe. That means that local airports are shutting down (no ATC) and US is not yet awake.
Also to have good top-down coverage you basically need to find a “event”. Those are either just finished or not yet started when I have time to fly.
When I fly it’s often very nervous because I’m racing to the destination before ATC leaves. More often than not I’m too late and all that is left is unicom so basically same as flying offline.
Try Pilotedge. It’s not free and it only covers parts of the US but it’s always online during the hours you fly and it has that top-down coverage you want.
They could always tell the controller that their Nav system is not operating as expected and would appreciate vectors for a proper approach. If that does not work, tell the controller that our Nav system has failed and we need either vectors for a visual approach or we will have to declare an emergency.
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I tried that once at KLAX and the controllers were very happy to help us. Oh and yes, you are right… I did not have a Nav failure, I totally screwed up the FMS… It was a good lesson !
Well, we have all been there at one point. The reason we see so many beginners is because of MSFS 2020. Unless you’re a real life pilot it’s very unlikely you’re going to do everything perfect in VATSIM in the beginning.
I see people talk about the lack of coverage quite often. I’m an American living in the United States and thus enjoy flying in the United States however I don’t limit myself to just flying in the United States. I’ll take myself elsewhere when there is downtime. I enjoy flying under VFR all over the world. There are so many pretty places.