How to proceed after a CTD?

[Simon Dettling 1473739]

Hello everyone

 

I'm flying on VATSIM for about 1.5 months now, and a few days ago I had my first CTD while flying online. As the CTD itself wouldn't be enough, it happened exactly after I lined up on the runway and after I got my takeoff clearance.

 

Even though my PC crashed, I could still see my airplane on the runway in VatScope. (Which makes sense, as my Vatsim Session was still online). I quickly tried to load a flight on to a parking stand at the same Airport and re-connect to tell the Tower what happened. It was about 5 Minutes after the CTD, that I noticed that my previous session got disconnected.

 

I guess there is some Auto-Disconnect in VATSIM or I got disconnected by a supervisor.

 

My Question now is. What should I do in the future if something like this should happen again? Try and reconnect and inform the according station as I tried? I guess, once you're in the air, a CTD is not that tragic. But in a situation like this, it is pretty ugly and I guess caused some overhead for the tower.

 

Thanks.

[Nestor Perez]

If you get disconnected from the server (sim crash, connection lost, CTD, etc...) you don't need to worry about disconnecting from the servers. If the servers know nothing about you for some time (15-30 seconds), your connection will be automatically dropped. The datafile that apps like VATScope use only gets updated every 2 minutes, so that might explain why you saw yourself online a bit after you had the CTD, even if you were really no longer online

 

As controllers we'll be glad to know why you "disconnected", but it's not something we can't live without, so you don't need to get anxious over it

[Simon Dettling 1473739]

Appreciate your answer, Nestor. In this case I'm relieved, that I haven't done anything wrong.

 

Thanks!

[TJ Claridge 1474081]

I am new to VATSIM and also had a CTD as I was entering the downwind - I used the message box and indicated my tail number and a CTD. I am not sure that was the proper approach but figured that was the best I could do. Trying to load up and contact on radio seemed a little too much and maybe confusing.

 

But also glad to hear it isn't a huge issue when you CTD.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

But also glad to hear it isn't a huge issue when you CTD.

... or when your cat walks across the surge protector and turns it off, or your network/power goes out, or when your wife sees it's after 1am and throws the circuit breaker switch for the outlet in your home office, or who knows what else. It's courteous to let them know if you can, but it occasionally happens where there's no warning, & they understand that & won't hold it against you. (For that matter, It happens to the controllers, too!)

[Trent Hopkinson]

If it's just the network dropping out, Don't pause. Just continue with your last instruction and try to reconnect. If you are on final approach, just stay offline till you vacate the runway.

 

If your sim crashes, windows crashes or PC reboots (or doesn't) then there's nothing much to do. ATC will see your target go "COAST" for a few minutes (the radar computer [Mod - Happy Thoughts]umes you are maintaining your last known path/speed/heading/altitude), then after a while, your position on radar/adsb will disappear. If it's a quiet day, they might wonder where you went. On a busy day, they might protect that "Space" in the sequence for a while (in case you come back in a minute or 3) but after a while, your position is essentially just a space to be filled with other traffic.