Anyone using the Carenado Mooney on VATSIM ?

[Kevin Jones]

Is anyone using the Mooney on VATSIM. I just want to know what your experience was like. I got VATSIM with V-PILOT set up last night. It was getting late and I just did a small airport to small airport test flight. The radio acted funky though and I could not change Com1 frequency; it could have been due to me having the Copilot handle ATC comms setting on. I'm still learning the exact setup needed. Also the XPONDER kept changing frequencies on me .

Also, do you need to contact the Center of the nearest large airport when taking off or landing a GA plane from a small airport or are you just free to do your thing monitoring the UNICOM Freq ? provided you are not invading the major airspaces?

Also, does weather and time need to be live ? Can a I do a day flight at say 11 pm my time ?

I may try 172 next as I see some YouTube tutorials on VATSIM using that. It seems the Comm button lights don't always activate on the panel with the Mooney and it can be a bit confusing.

I just want to add that I think all the strict rules on VATSIM are in place to stop players from being total idiots. There is a YouTube of a player purposely irritating the ATC controller and the ATC was patient with the idiot never the less. It doesn't appear players are going to get heads chopped off making errors within the learning curve. Also some of the ATC's seemed or sounded nervous themselves. I guess its best to start small and local to where you fly a lot and then branch out from there.

[Matthew Bartels]

You want to turn off all of the MSFS assists. They cause lots of problems on VATSIM.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

I fly the Mooney Ovation on VATSIM frequently, without issues.  Radios and transponder all work perfectly as far as I can tell.  Follow Matt's advice above, and you should be fine.

Read up on the VATSIM "Top-Down Coverage" philosophy.  You'd contact the controller in VATSIM that you'd contact in the real world, based on what you're doing and what airspace you're in.  However on VATSIM not all ATC positions are staffed all the time, so the duties of any non-staffed positions fall to the next-highest controller in the hierarchy, all the way up to Center.  If no one is on including Center, monitor 122.8 and self-announce your intentions.

It's best to fly with real weather when possible, but, that's certainly not a hard-and-fast rule.  The main thing is that you'll want to use winds consistent with traffic around you whenever possible to avoid situations where you are trying to use an airport in the opposite flow as everyone else, or, your groundspeed and ground track are significantly different than everyone else's.  That being said, controllers are used to dealing with variations in weather from one pilot to the next, so it's not usually a deal-breaker if you're running something custom.

Time of day doesn't matter.  Controller can't see whether you have daylight or not.  They will often simulate Class D tower hours based on real clock time, so you might find that a controller is treating a Class D airport as closed and hand you off to self-announce on CTAF (aka "UNICOM" on 122.8) even though it's the middle of the day in your sim.  There are also certain charted visual approach procedures that are only valid during certain times, and in a few cases, SIDs and STARs that are only valid during certain times.  Controllers will usually follow those times.  But as for whether you have a sun or a moon or a cloud or some combination thereof showing on your end, it's not critical.

I agree with you that controllers on VATSIM are typically pretty patient.  There are some exceptions.  Sometimes it boils down to the individual, sometimes it's case-by-case such as during very high traffic situations.  Most of the time you'll find that controllers will give new folks lots of slack when traffic is light or moderate and the new person isn't causing a huge disruption.

Edited May 6, 2021 at 08:06 PM by Robert Shearman Jr