Jason Cochran

Daniel, This is awesome. I wasn't aware of this impending change (somehow I missed the change notice), so this could be a lifesaver. I'm not a hardcore Java guy, so would you be open to help get this running on a server in the cloud some place (for example, Amazon Lambda or Heroku) and making it available through an API? EDIT: To be clear, I knew this was going to happen at some point, but per the forum Daniel referenced earlier, I thought it was years down the road. Jason

The proposal is to ask VATSIM to adopt a policy of actively discouraging it. So, if adopted it would be VATSIM's position, rather than "a small group that use the network and feel inconvenienced by its use." However, I do think you underestimate the number of people who, if asked, would support such a policy. I'm not sure why you think it's a tiny group.

I'm not sure if you're genuinely asking or being snarky (sorry it's a little hard to tell with just words sometimes), but in the event your question is genuine... my opinion (based on some responses here and elsewhere) that there is enough interest to warrant further investigation. There have been a lot of ideas and opinions throw into this thread, some which confuse the issue or mischaracterize the original proposal. But I'd say about half are interested in some kind of modification of the existing rule, and it would be worth a study.

That’s what I figured. But, the point of this thread was to try to stir interest in changing that.

I previously mentioned that my idea is to simply force someone to attest. I’m sure nobody wants to review paperwork from a doctor. I’m not suggesting that. So, if you force people to attest, they will have to blatantly lie to use text without qualification. That alone, in my estimation, would reduce the numbers significantly. I wouldn’t lie about such a thing. Edit: Please ignore this box below... I can’t delete it using my phone’s browser. Ugh.

There’s a bit of irony that I’ve missed so far that just struck me. Not necessarily good or bad, just ironic. It seems from the sentiment I’ve read so far that VATSIM is unwilling to say, “If your microphone broke or isn’t usable to produce good quality sound, you must log off until you fix it.” Instead, keeping text as a backup for whatever trouble might befall a pilot. Yet there are other services where you would not be allowed to log on without a mic, or fly with an unintelligible audio quality. Which of those networks would we expect to be commercial? My first instinct tells

I concur with Ross’ interpretation and thoughts on this aspect.

I think your reply speaks to a different question than the one being debated here, so I just want to be careful to note the original proposal was not to eliminate /t for the disabled. In fact, it would leave /t in place for those who need it, but make /r (at minimum, /v preferred) required for everyone else.

I would be interested to see if this can make an impact and we should start with this. Of course, the CoC already states that voice is the preferred method. Although, I’m not sure if anybody truly reads the CoC until they’ve violated it.

I think this situation could be resolved by simply using /r?

I think it's a fair request to ask that the BOG (or whomever) conduct a formal survey of the user population as a whole to take a pulse on this issue.

Interesting question. I didn't spend much time thinking about enforcement, but I suppose it would have to evolve over time. I think it could start fairly low-tech. Visibility ranges are a good example of that... nothing prevents me from signing on to an TWR position with a 150 nm visibility range, but I always seem to get a visit from a supervisor within about three minutes. So, maybe a report that triggers an alert when a non-flagged account sends a text message on a radio frequency? I'm not too familiar with the VATSIM on the backend, but perhaps the end game could be that the FSD

I must respectfully disagree. I think this kind of user education campaign would be hard fought and produce too little in the way of measurable results toward the desired outcome. I certainly don't have time to have this kind of conversation while controlling. It may be an unpopular opinion (but I suspect it's not an unpopular opinion if the entirety of VATSIM's user base was polled based on my conversation with other pilots and controllers), but yes, frankly I do believe pilots should be forced to use /r (not /v) unless there is a demonstrable reason they cannot. For me, the impact

I don’t think speech-disabled folks need /t, since they could use /r with no issues. Incidentally, some of the best pilots I work have a speech disability! You rock guys. In my opinion, the exceptions should be handled on the honor system. I’m sure most people would do the right thing. If not and there were suspicions, I suppose verification could be requested.

I appreciate the opportunity that /t afforded to those with limited means over the past 20+ years, but with the recent increase in traffic and major technical advances, there's really no reason to keep /t (and some compelling reasons to abandon it). It's time that we abandon /t as an option for pilots, with the rare exception of the hearing disabled (for whom I would be more than pleased to continue /t service). Please note, I am not proposing an abandonment of /r. That mode offers some distinct benefits such as keeping the peace for sleeping family members, voice disabilities, and other

I agree with Ernesto on this one. Perhaps it should not limit the person flying, but there needs to be a more robust, built-in mechanism to prevent filing a flight plan with an unintentionally goofy call sign. I die a little inside every time N14OTP80 calls me. I guess if one wants to be intentionally goofy, then by all means. I'm aware that VATSIM, unlike other networks, is not interested in enforcing any kind of realism in this regard.

Right you are, Mr. Shearman. But... unfortunately, these guys are asking about a different thing. What you are talking about is related to how traffic is passed from a home router to the PC where the client is running. They are asking about how their home internet presents to the outside world. IPv4 address is something like 70.50.20.30 IPv6 address is something like 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 As you can probably infer, there are many, many more available IPv6 addresses than IPv4. You and I have a publicly-facing IPv4 address. It's not dedicated to us (unless we

+1 for Kafka. Very nice, guys. Though we have struggled with what seems to be higher than normal CPU consumption of the brokers, we are currently using Kafka at scale in a very large enterprise... and it's super dependable and mostly runs itself.

Amazon S3

I am neither for nor against the change. I know it benefits folks for various reasons and some have a real safety-related legitimate need to do so. For me, the only downside is the aforementioned lack of "getting to know a pilot." I can remember names easily, but numbers not-so-much. On occasion, I have remembered that "John Q Pilot" was a particularly skillful pilot and that "Sam Q. Doe" was the new guy that I helped understand how to copy a clearance three days prior. In some situations, that has helped me provide better service for Sam and John. John may get more complicated instructi

David, I've been around VATSIM for a while now (but only seriously for about 18 months). I've got it figured out now, but I very much remember feeling exactly as you do. It wasn't the training part that confused me (that was easy once I was affiliated and talking to the guys at Miami). The hard part, as you so well described, was figuring out what to click and what comes next. As others have pointed out, the distributed nature of VATSIM organizations makes this difficult to figure out. As a small example, one point of confusion for me was trying to discern the difference between VAT

Very similar. Although a bit longer in duration. Also, love flightdeck2sim.

Another relevant detail: when I asked the pilot what happened, he said he adjusted his microphone gain mid-transmission. I do not know whether that was the cause, nor am I certain of the mechanics of how he adjusted the gain. I'm quite certain that the pilot did not cause this to happen on purpose.

At 0158Z on 2019-10-21, while controlling MIA_TWR and monitoring MIA_GND during an OTS exam, DAL1817 transmitted a read back of a clearance. The transmission began at a normal volume, consistent with the volume of all other aircraft on the frequency. Over the course of the next three seconds, his transmission became ear-piercingly loud (accompanied by audio artifacts that were not speech), which cause both me and the other controller to need to remove our headphones to avoid hearing damage. This was not just loud, this was the equivalent of someone blowing a whistle about three inc