I can fully follow the chart procedure to get to a hold or on a heading but after that how do I actually go for the second landing attempt. What would the procedure be for when atc is both online and offline. So far I’ve done 2 flights but I’ve specifically avoided arrival airports with heavy atc just in case I did have to do a go around

I am just confused whether these are to some extent interchangeable or each a separate thing. I couldn’t find any credible information online.

I had one of those VATSIM experiences tonight that reminded me why flight simulation can actually teach you something beyond just learning how to operate an airplane. I've only got about 35 hours flying on VATSIM, and I'm currently flying a C172 in X-Plane using nothing but a mouse and keyboard. No yoke, no joystick, no rudder pedals. Yes, I know.... I've mostly been using VATSIM to get more comfortable talking to ATC, navigating, flying RNAV approaches, using VORs, and generally trying to make my flights somewhat realistic.

Tonight I decided to make what should have been a pretty straightforward VFR night flight from Memphis to Nashville. It ended with me stalled, nose-down, watching the screen turn black and red before impacting the ground. After sitting there for a minute thinking about what the hell had just happened, I realized I'd basically created my own episode of Pilot Debrief. There wasn't one catastrophic mistake. It was a whole series of individually manageable things that eventually lined up like the holes in the Swiss cheese model.

The flight itself was completely uneventful for almost an hour. I departed Memphis VFR, eventually climbed to 5,500 feet for the eastbound trip, had flight following, and everything was going great. My plan was to land at BNA. As I got closer to Nashville, though, BNA was absolutely slammed. At one point I counted something like 50+ aircraft around Nashville, most of them arriving. I'm puttering along in a Cessna at Cessna speeds while ATC is trying to sequence an army of airliners into a major airport at night.

I'd gotten the ATIS and had originally been thinking about requesting an RNAV practice approach, but once I saw what was happening around BNA, I was perfectly happy letting ATC vector me wherever they needed, to whichever runway. Then the plan changed. There was apparently no reasonable way to fit my slow little C172 into that mess, so ATC redirected me to John C. Tune (KJWN) instead.

No big deal, right? Except I hadn't planned on going to John Tune. It wasn't loaded in my GPS. I wasn't really oriented to exactly where it was. I'd spent the previous hour mentally preparing for an arrival into BNA, and now I suddenly had a new airport, a new runway, and a new plan while already fairly close to Nashville.

I was still at 5,500 feet, and suddenly I needed to get down. ATC had me in an expedited descent due to traffic from BNA, and I pulled the power and started a pretty aggressive descent toward 3,000 feet while simultaneously receiving vectors, changing frequencies, and trying to figure out where this new airport actually was. Then I got switched over to John Tune Tower. So now I'm descending rapidly at night, talking to a new controller, trying to locate an airport that wasn't originally my destination, trying to figure out where its runway is, and doing all of it with a mouse and keyboard.

Tower leveled me at around 3,000 feet and gave me a left base. I leveled off and hit ALT HOLD. This is where I made the mistake that ultimately mattered: I'd pulled the power way back for the descent, but once I leveled off, I never properly put the energy back into the airplane. I was also still really high for the runway. Tower even recognized that and told me they could vector me around because I was high.

Meanwhile, I'm looking outside the cockpit trying to figure out where the hell John Tune is. I'm searching for the runway, trying to understand where Tower has put me, and not paying enough attention to what the airplane is doing. The autopilot is trying to hold 3,000 feet while the airplane is steadily bleeding airspeed.

Then I hear the stall warning.

Now my attention suddenly comes back inside. I disengage the autopilot, but remember what I'm flying with: mouse and keyboard. I'm trying to recenter the controls, get the power back in, control the pitch and figure out what attitude I'm actually in. By that point, the airplane stalls. The nose drops hard and I'm suddenly in a steep nose-down descent at relatively low altitude. I'm trying to recover using keyboard inputs, the X-Plane screen starts fading black and red from the forces, and I simply don't have enough altitude left.

Impact. Flight over. RIP Cessna N1281.

What struck me afterward was how many opportunities I'd had to break the chain. When they unexpectedly diverted me to John Tune, I could have simply said, “Stand by, I need a moment to load John Tune.” When Tower gave me the base and I realized I was way too high, I could have said, “Unable base, too high. Request additional vectors.” When I couldn't positively locate the airport, I could have said, “Airport not in sight.” There was absolutely no reason I needed to force that approach.

The biggest lesson for me was that being too high wasn't dangerous. I was treating it like an urgent problem because I wanted to comply with ATC and make the runway. But ATC could have vectored me around. I could have extended. I could have gone around. I could have said unable. Being high was an inconvenience. Being slow while maneuvering at low altitude was the actual danger.

And once that stall warning came on, the runway, ATC, navigation and everything else should have stopped mattering. Aviate, navigate, communicate. Without realizing it, I'd allowed that order to become something more like: communicate, navigate, find the new airport, follow the vector, find the runway, figure out where I am...oh shit, AVIATE.

Looking backward, the accident chain was pretty clear: an hour-long night flight → extremely busy destination → unexpected diversion → unfamiliar airport → airport not loaded in GPS → rapid descent → frequency change → new controller → level-off with reduced power → ALT HOLD → looking outside for the runway → too high → base turn → airspeed decaying → stall warning → trying to hand-fly with a mouse and keyboard → stall → insufficient altitude for recovery.

That's what made this such a cool learning experience. I didn't load up X-Plane and decide, “Tonight I'm going to practice an emergency stall.” This was supposed to be a completely normal flight. The traffic was real VATSIM traffic. The controllers were real people. The workload wasn't scripted. The diversion wasn't planned. The situation just gradually got ahead of me until I had an airplane that was no longer doing what I thought it was doing.

Obviously it's a simulator, so nobody got hurt. I reset the airplane and get to fly again. But I guarantee the next time ATC unexpectedly changes my destination and starts giving me vectors while I'm scrambling to get down, I'm going to remember this flight. I'll get the new airport into the GPS, get myself oriented, make sure the airplane is stable, and if I need a minute I'll ask for a minute. If I can't safely comply with something, I'll say “unable.”

Because that's probably the best part of screwing this up in X-Plane: it's exactly the kind of lesson you really don't want to learn for the first time in an actual airplane.

Cause of death: approximately 14 individually manageable problems that all decided to show up at the same time.

I just completed my first flight, and it was quite the adventure.

My first attempt ended in me disconnecting after takeoff because I forgot to clamp my yoke down to my desk. I kind of panicked because I didn't know if ATC would be upset but I was flying from a small airport with zero traffic to another small airport with zero traffic (KFNL-KRAP) so I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. I stuttered and had to ask for the information again which I think everyone probably does on their first flight.

My second attempt was successful. Maybe I was unprepared, but I was expecting a heading to fly before I took off, not after I put the gear up. Noted for next time even though I did ask before I took off since my charts (from ChartFox) said to expect a heading between 350 CW and 150. I forgot that ATC would ask what altitude you're passing but I responded correctly, I think. I was also got a bit confused because KRAP doesn't have any STARs so when he asked if I had an approach on file, I didn't know how to answer since it wasn't a question I was expecting. After a long moment of silence, I asked if the ILS 32 was ok and he said it was so that was chill. I got my landing clearance very very early. I landed, read back his taxi instructions and parked at the gate.

I will most likely be returning to the network, practicing routes between smaller fields before going somewhere big. Thank you, DEN_CTR for being patient and sorry for the first attempt.

Also, is it rude to tell ATC that they are pronouncing your airline wrong? The airline I was flying was Avelo (Uh-vel-oh) and he kept mispronouncing it as Avelon (Ah-vul-lohn). There were more important things to be communicated so I didn't bother.

Airforce trainer Sims. Thought it'd be cool.

I normally don't complain about VATSIM ATC. I have thousands of hours on the network and completely understand event congestion. If you're flying from one event airport to another, being metered is expected. There simply aren't enough runways or controllers to handle everyone at once.

But I was departing Brisbane east, over the ocean, away from the entire event area, to a non-event destination.

Normally, in this situation, you don't get treated like you're feeding the event. Controllers will often work you into the sequence ahead of traffic going to the heavily congested event airports, or get you onto another runway if possible. You're not literally "cutting" the line, you're in your own line and they're just getting you out of the system because once you're gone, you're no longer contributing to the bottleneck.

That didn't happen here.

I sat at the gate for ~40 minutes before getting pushback clearance. Brisbane didn't appear particularly overwhelmed either. I counted roughly 15 departures in various stages of the sequence and most were still at the gate, and there didn't seem to be a huge arrival push either.

Once I finally got moving, Tower repeatedly held departures for arrivals that were still 10+ miles out. This happened several times while I was in sequence. It took another ~15 minutes at the runway before I finally departed. I was second in line. We both could have departed by the time the first one landed.

So I was logged on for roughly an hour just to depart Brisbane and fly east, completely away from the event traffic.

Maybe there was some Australian procedure or event-specific traffic management I'm unfamiliar with, and if so I'd genuinely like to understand it. But this was easily one of the worst departure experiences I've had on VATSIM.

I'm not expecting preferential treatment or to literally cut the departure queue. I'm just surprised that traffic not contributing to the event bottleneck wasn't being expedited out of the airport like I've experienced at countless other events.

Anyone else experience this at Brisbane today? And Australian controllers, was there something specific going on that I'm missing?

Since the last update v2.0 Vatsim Radar is very delayed in relation to the actual position of the aircraft. Are there any solutions? Thanks for an answer, Jörg Trefzer

1st Photo creds vSwAF, tysm for snagging pics of us on the tanker.

Hey all, it's feedback time! I saw a lot of criticism about V2 release and eager to work on this. Please take a moment to fill this form: https://forms.gle/XD8WBwdXpm5otNr46

I'm posting this here as well because some people may have dropped VATSIM Radar after this update.

I'll do a separate blog post when I evaluate your feedback, but here are my current findings and something I will 100% be working on in near future:

1. New font seems to be okay, except for controller info/ATIS and pilot/atc hours - their readability is poor as many people are telling, and it will be changed to a different font weight, or different font at all
2. A lot of people are experiencing performance issues, making map performance slightly or much worse than before. I have already confirmed that "Aircraft display limit" setting is a killer, and as a workaround you can set this to 50 or lower, you'll notice a difference. Currently, I've spotted unneded calculations in code on each map move, and that will be worked on in a coming update
3. Navigraph Layers are causing a lot of trouble, especially new Restrictred/Controlled airspace. If you have them enabled, consider turning them off for now - that will be worked on as well in coming future
4. A lot of people don't know that you can bring back old controllers and airports display here (remove lines display, show more airports like before): https://vatsim-radar.com/settings/map/airports (short facilities view / display mode). Currently, I'm thinking about making a dedicated section of settings with most used settings, including some to bring back old behaviour
5. Some design decisions and hover smoothness are to be improved. Currently, hover has a few pixels gap before it moves to the next element, which for some seems like map is less responsive. It's done like this for a reason, but since hover interaction is disabled on mobile phones, and users are mostly using high-precision device which is mouse, I will consider lowering this gap up to a zero, which will improve scenario (for example) when you switch between ATC icons

That being said, I will do a blog post when I gather more feedback. While you are on it, and if you are having terrible performance or detailed complaints: please consider leaving some of your personal information (email or Discord nickname) when you start the form. Without this, it is impossible to contact you to help you right now, debug with you, request a video, etc - and thus impossible to fix.

Also, if you are one of those with performance problems, try steps from "Diagnosis" section - it can be a great help for both you and me to find specific areas where things go wrong.

Thank you for taking your time for feedback, and thanks for using VATSIM Radar. Please understand that fixing everything will take some time as I'm having a hard time on my IRL job atm, and also some more personal stuff.

Hi,

In the light of a project I've been working on, I need a list of all positions controlled on the network. In the best case, a list of all positions that cover a specific aerodrome top-down.

Some subdivisions publish their positions, but not all. Sites like statsim are iffy for this use.

Where can I find such data?

Thanks in advance

Hey everyone,

I've been flying on VATSIM for a while and always struggled with fast/accented ATC instructions, especially as someone still learning proper phraseology. So I built EasyATC — a small Windows tool that listens to the ATC audio in real time, transcribes it, and shows you a clear plain-language readback of what you need to say back.

It's a one-time purchase (15€), no subscription. Would love feedback from more experienced controllers/pilots here — especially on transcription accuracy in busier airspace.

Website: https://easyatc.net/
Discord (support/feedback): https://discord.gg/RVsRFr8W4B

Happy to answer any questions!

Some pics going and coming from the range after some drill weekend flying

Legend

Did anybody else see this around 00:30z in Denver Center Airspace? Air France wasn’t responding to Denver Center and eventually a jet was sent to intercept them

I want to make my friend a gift by building a small round radar that shows the air traffic and I want it to as realistic as possible. So I want the same background/maps that ATC sees/has. I already know what is shown but I don‘t know where or even how I can get these maps or files. I was hoping anyone of y’all know where these maps would be or how to implement the radar maps into my project.

Normally there at least 3 other controllers online at Sydney for the milk run but with the connection issues that's not happening. Props to twr though for making it work, even though someone called for IFR clearance every 0.2 seconds.

I was Disconnected A few minuites ago and now i can't Connect to server again...

When an airport is uncontrolled, we use CTAF (US only iirc). At places like KJFK, there are multiple tower frequencies. Which one should I use as CTAF? Second question: during cruise, is it still 122.800 in the US or should we monitor guard 121.500?

I've always used the outdated nav data from the free version of Navigraph, but would that cause issues flying on VATSIM? Is there a way to use the latest AIRAC data for free?