VATSIM NOTAMs

[Lars Eiberger]

VATSIM Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)
Issued by Ross Carlson (887155), 14-Aug-2007 05:03 UTC
__________________________________________________ ________________________

Greetings VATSIM controllers. VRC 1.2.1 is now available
for download. This is primarily a bug fix release. For
more details, visit the following web page:

http://www.metacraft.com/VRC/release_1.2.1.shtml

[Florian Harms]

VATSIM Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)
Issued by Richard Jenkins (800012), 15-Sep-2007 19:28 UTC

__________________________________________________ ________________________


VATSIM is proud to announce that its newest radar client, EuroScope is now available for the controller community!
The long-awaited smart radar by Gergely Csernak simulates the functions of radar systems most common in Europe but also increasingly around the world. With inspiration and feedback from real-world controllers, EuroScope was developed to be as real as it gets. Discover the high degree of reality, user-friendliness (use of mouse makes life easier) and flexibility (fully customizable styles and layouts) that makes online controlling a whole new experience! EuroScope offers innovative solutions for handling aircraft, communicating with other ATC units and air traffic control management. By analyzing all flights' horizontal and vertical situation as well as flight plans, EuroScope can now actually allocate aircraft to sectors and predict movements.

Find all information of a flight in or entering your sector using the customizable smart tags; explore the advanced integrated voice communication capabilities and easy-to-use voice ATIS; train your skills offline with the built-in ATC simulator. Don't just imagine, download and find out more about EuroScope's many new features by visiting http://www.euroscope.hu!

[Florian Harms]

Online-Flugsimulation erhöht reale Luftverkehrssicherheit

VATSIM und MITRE schließen Vereinbarung


MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) und VATSIM haben die Einigung auf ein Partnerschaftsprojekt bekannt gegeben. In diesem Projekt nutzt die amerikanische Forschungseinrichtung, die sich schwerpunktmäßig mit neuen Verfahren zur Erhöhung der Flugsicherheit befasst, das Onlinenetzwerk von VATSIM. In VATSIM sind über 200.000 private Nutzer von Flugsimulationen zusammen gefasst. Das Netzwerk bietet den Hobbypiloten eine virtuelle Welt, eine nahezu reale Abbildung des realen Luftraums.
Richard Jenkins, Präsident von VATSIM: „Dieses Programm ist das direkte Ergebnis der Vorgaben des VATSIM-Netzwerks, so zu fliegen und die virtuelle Verkehrskontrolle auszuüben, dass das Ziel 'as real as it gets' im virtuellen Luftraum umgesetzt wird.“
MITRE hat seit seiner Gründung 1958 die FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), die amerikanische Flugaufsicht, in enger Partnerschaft beim Aufbau und Test neuer Techniken und Verfahren zur Erhöhung der Flugsicherheit unterstützt. Die Organisation arbeitet weiter mit diversen internationalen zivilen Firmen zusammen, die in ihren Ländern die Rolle der FAA ausüben.
Jenkins: „Mit dem Schritt, das VATSIM-Netzwerk mit dessen virtuelle Piloten und Luftverkehrslenker einzusetzen, verlässt VATSIM das Niveau des ausschließlichen Hobbies und hält Einzug in die reale Welt der Fliegerei und insbesondere der Flugsicherheit.“

[Matthias Schmitz]

Vice President Communications

The Board of Governors is soliciting applications for the VATGOV7 position, a full voting member of the Board of Governors.

The Vice President, Communications reviews, monitors, updates, develops, and implements changes to the VATSIM website and other communications media (both internal and external). Maintains records of Board of Governors meetings and other documents for historical purposes. Interacts with the Founders, Board Members, Executive Committee, and/or Regional Directors as needed to accomplish these tasks.

The successful candidate will have significant experience in website, forum and mailing list administration and project management. Candidate will be responsible for implementation and monitoring of communications projects outside of software development. Additionally, candidates should have a good working knowledge of VATSIM structure and personnel and be able to dedicate 5-10 hours per week (approximately 1 hour per day) to various administrative tasks associated with VATSIM.

Interested applicants can send their qualifications to jobs@vatsim.net no later than March 9, 2008.

[Kai Bock]

VATSIM Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)
Issued by Ross Carlson (887155), 04-May-2008 05:24 UTC
__________________________________________________ ________________________

VATSIM is pleased to announce the release of VAT-Spy, a traffic
and ATC viewer application exclusively for the VATSIM network.
VAT-Spy was developed by Ross Carlson, author of VRC (Virtual
Radar Client), an ATC radar simulator for VATSIM.

VAT-Spy was closely modeled after ServInfo, a popular traffic
and ATC viewer for multiple online flying networks. VAT-Spy's
feature set includes a few new items such as:

* Smooth panning and zooming on the world map.
* Most fonts and colors on the map are customizable.
* Multi-threaded for high performance and responsive interface.
* Map bookmarks allow you to save favorite views of the map.

In general, the goal for VAT-Spy was to mimic the primary
functionality of ServInfo, while providing a more responsive
user interface through the use of multi-threading, as well as
smooth panning and zooming on the world map.

VAT-Spy is a Windows desktop application built on the Microsoft
.NET Framework. To learn more about VAT-Spy, see some
screenshots, and to download the application, visit the VAT-Spy
home page at the following web address:

http://www.metacraft.com/VATSpy/

Please note: The data set (FIR/ARTCC boundaries, airport lists,
etc.) that version 1.0 of VAT-Spy includes is the same data set
that was compiled and released for ServInfo in late 2007 by
VATSIM. In the near future, Ross will be soliciting data updates
from the VATSIM membership. Another member-wide NOTAM will be
sent with instructions for submitting data updates at that time.

Enjoy!

[Daniel Raetzel]

VATSIM Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)
Issued by Richard Jenkins (800012), 02-Jun-2008 16:44 UTC
__________________________________________________ ___

VATSIM suffered a major server outage this weekend and is still in the process of recovering services. Currently, the FSD network (the one you connect to fly and control) is fully functional. The data feeds for ServInfo, DLMN, vRoute, and VATSpy are operating again. Weather server has been recovered and weather is updating. We are still waiting for the SweatBox server to come back online. Unfortunately, the VATSIM forums are still down. The data server remained online during the incident and no stats data was lost.

So what happened?

From the ISP:

"From Doug Erwin:
This evening at 4:55pm CDT in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room. Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost.

We have just been allowed into the building to physically inspect the damage. Early indications are that the short was in a high-volume wire conduit. We were not allowed to activate our backup generator plan based on instructions from the fire department.

This is a significant outage, impacting approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers. All members of our support team are in, and all vendors who supply us with data center equipment are on site. Our initial assessment, although early, points to being able to have some service restored by mid-afternoon on Sunday. Rest assured we are working around the clock∑."

VATSIM anticipates all other services to be restored shortly.

[Kai Klingenberg]

VATSIM Notice to Airmen (NOTAM)
Issued by Ross Carlson (887155), 23-Aug-2008 06:07 UTC
__________________________________________________ ________________________

Brian Gefrich and Joel DeYoung are pleased to announced that
after a long wait, a public beta of SquawkBox 4 is now available
to try on the VATSIM network. This version of SquawkBox works
with Flight Simulator 2002, 2004 and FSX. It has been tested on
Windows XP and Vista. Download this latest beta version and
help find and resolve the last outstanding bugs.

The main Squawkbox site can be found here:

http://www.squawkbox.ca/

Please use the Squawkbox forums to report or discuss any issues:

http://www.squawkbox.ca/forum

The following issues are already known to occur:

- Transponder module may toggle to "ACTIVE" when connecting to a
server, regardless of current setting. You may still set the
transponder to STANDBY mode after the connection is made.
- Switching your sound device in the settings while receiving a
voice transmission can cause crashes.

Download the SB4 open beta via one of the links found here:

http://squawkbox.ca/downloads

Enjoy!
__________________________________________________ ________________________

This message was issued by a senior staff member in order to provide
information to enhance your enjoyment of VATSIM, of which you are a member.
If you no longer wish to be a member of VATSIM, please contact
the membership department - see http://vatsim.net/ for contact details.