Tom Gauvin

THANK YOU!!! :D

Like the new functionality! But, the color scheme is anemic. PLEASE, give the color scheme a transfusion.

While I agree, as long as people can fly it's not a big deal, at the same time I'm a little blown away that we have a provider that can't manage a low down time migration or move. I'm on the equipment side of the data/telephony business and if we told our customers a migration would cause an outage of more than a few hours we would no longer be their vendor. If our ISP is providing us a sweet price or is donating their services its a different story but, if we are paying the going rate for the service then getting a short notice and an outage that is measured in days and not hours that's unacceptable. Sorry, not trying to cause trouble. It's just my reaction as someone who works in the industry.

Bottom line: It's amusing to think about and joke about, but IMHO not the best use of the BVA Scenery Teams time. As for being too unrealistic or too complex for the BVA scenery team, I think they have more than the skills needed to do it. The landmass that was Meigs is still there so that's not an issue. Charts, Freq, Coordinates, Elevation data, etc. are all easy to obtain or create. There are ample photos at both ground level and aerial of the original field, and Sat images of the current landmass. No issue there at all. As an example, it was an amature attempt on my part, but I was able to take a real plot of land near where I live that had a small abandon grass runway on it and using some airport creation software and a pointers from some scenery people here I created my own private air park complete with an extended paved runway, houses and a mansion, private roads linking to the existing depicted roads, private hanger, taxiways, singage, VOR, etc. It even shows up on the default FSX GPS and map. So, if an amature hack like myself could do that, recreating Meigs is a perfectly do-able for the skilled people on our scenery team. That said, I return to my opening comment in this post "Bottom line: It's amusing to think about and joke about, but not IMHO not the best use of the BVA Scenery Teams time." I'd rather see the scenery team devote their generously donated skills, talents, and time to keeping the current real world active airfields up to date. But, KFMD F#%& Mayor Daley field does have a nice ring to it... :mrgreen:

We could call it Screw Mayor Daley Field. :mrgreen: If the designator wasn't already in use we could use KSMD.

Thank you Tom, amazing! I was actually going to send you a note to ask whether you thought it would be appropriate to post on some of the simpit building forums that you frequent. I know it's not directly the right audience but at the same time I'm sure all those people are FS users and many may use an online community in one form or another. By the way, I'm already getting requests to add communities to the list :). Evan Evan, I'll post on the pit builder sites that I frequent. Most of the pit builders that fly on line and post about it on those forums use VATSIM so they aren't impacted by the gamespy shutdown, but it can't hurt to post the link. PS: Thanks Tom ( tofutwitch11 ) for catching the link typo on a couple of the AVSIM posts and fixing it.

I was out on AVSIM so I searched all the gamespy threads about it being shut down and suggested the link. Hope that helps.

When I saw the thread title I was thinking more extreme, as in the ant-arctic. There are enough airfields, but it's not a good RC spot since none of the fields are controlled (that I know of) but nav across that blank white surface is a real test of skill.

No, not yet. Work got the best of me and has been eating up a lot of my time. I'm hoping we can pull something together though over the next month or two.

I recall the thread very well and was an active poster in it. Whether anything official or not I think some intercept practice would be good fun for the fighter jocks and for some of us interested in experiencing it. Hoping to get a couple hours logged over the next few days and would love to have some interaction with a military aircraft.

So, can the boys from OTIS scramble some jets for us? I know the proper action with a TFR is to avoid the area as posted, but I would really like to be on the receiving end of a virtual intercept just for the experience of it.

Agreed -- and in fact, the server is likely to be temporarily offline to pilots to facilitate the filming. I would advise a different date. Thanks! I wasn't thinking about that when I looked at the dates. If the 14th doesn't work, we'll find a date further out.

Sorry to have dropped the ball on this thread for so long, work has been a bit much for a bit longer than I thought. There is light at then end of the tunnel, it's not far off and it's not an oncoming train. I think . . . Interesting ideas! To get it started though I think keeping it open and simple would be best. If there's enough interest after the first one then it could be taken further. I'll be away for the upcoming Columbus Day weekend, but I'd like to go ahead and plan this for maybe two weekends out from now maybe the 14th or 15th??? Brandon offered to let us use some channels on Team Speak so that takes care of a place to talk at the destination airfield. Next it would be great to have a tower controller on board. If not we could use unicom at an uncontrolled field. Controlled or uncontrolled, the field should have enough ramp space to be GA friendly. I have a favorite (seldom used in in BVA) field that has a large ramp, KORH. It does have an active tower, sees only minimal commercial traffic these days and has a large GA ramp area. But, there are plenty of other options. Here's how I envision this. People would be free to fly in from any field outside a radius of the destination field (maybe 30nm). The important thing would be to plan your flight so you arrive within a specific window of time. We set a 30 minute arrival window at the destination field and open teamspeak up during that time and for a 30 minute window following that. No using teamspeak until you are at the ramp and your aircraft is cold and dark. So depending on how early people arrive there would be up to 60 minutes of teamspeak time. Then following that we all fly out as fast as we can fire up the engines and the tower can sequence us out, returning to our original departure points. So who's interested? What about the 14th or 15th of this month? And, what do you think of the format?

I've been off line for several days with several more days (actually weeks) coming up where time will be limited due to some intense activity at work and related business travel. I'm trying to get everything loaded on my laptop and setup so I can do some flying in the evenings from my hotel while away but not sure how well that will work. Then of course, after that I'm off on vacation for a couple weeks and we camp so very limited access. I still want to pursue this event format and will be glad to do so when I'm back in town, unless others might want to run with it, otherwise I'll pick up with it later in August at this point. If others are interested in flying or controlling let me know and I'll try to keep all posted. And, of course, it's just an idea so feel free to provide your thoughts on its viability or alternatives, or what might make it better.

I think that might work well. TS seems to eat far less Bandwidth and CPU than Skype. THX! The other item to care for is lining up some ATC volunteers for at least the event airfield.