New Pilot Training Night - 1st May (1900Z)

[David Winters 905945]

Tuesday 1st May sees the next in the incredibly famous series of New Pilot's Nights, this month it will be at Biggin Hill and the details can be found below. These are posted well in advance since there are things that you New Pilots need to do in advance of the night. We start at 1900z and finish usually around 2100z. (2000LT to 2200LT)

 

New Pilot's Nights are an opportunity for New Pilots (strange that!) to come along to an airfield, meet the pilot mentoring team, meet some ATC guys, ask shedloads of questions and do some flying in a totally non-pressurised environment where you can make all the mistakes you like with help available (but we don't do undercarriage repairs). As a follow up you can also opt for some one-to-one mentoring with one of the team - one flight or a whole series if you like - to get you going on Vatsim and doing what you want to do. VFR or IFR we usually have the right person to help you along in a hopefully friendly and unpressurised manner. Totally voluntary of course but thus far us mentors havn't recieved any death threats for providing a rubbish service.

 

MUST DO'S:

 

Join the VATSIM-UK Teamspeak server in advance of the night.

 

You should get registered and setup with Vatsim-UK's Teamspeak server, please try and get set up on it before the night, it's virtually impossible to get registered on the night itself so it's imperative that you get set up in advance. We conduct all the training via Teamspeak so if you're not on it you will miss out on how completely and utterly brilliant we are. See this link which also appears as a link on the Home Page:

 

http://www.vatsim-uk.org/index.php?page=teamspeak

 

Once you have been set-up on that you will find a New Pilot's Night room on there plus a couple of mentroing rooms that we use.

 

Get the Charts for Biggin Hill

 

These as always come from the CAA's AIS website with which you need to register (it's free of course). This link will take you straight to the airfield charts page via the login/registration screen:

 

http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/pubs/aip/html/aipad2.htm

 

We tend to do some VFR circuits just to get going but if someone wants to try some IFR circuits or a short cross-country then we also have some Radar cover arranged. There is no set plan for the night because it totally depends on who turns up, what their experience is and what they want to do - sometimes we get people who are struggling to even get connected to Vatsim (we can help with that as well) and sometimes we get people just wanting to make their first "live" flight, we've learned that there is no such thing as a "standard" New Pilot and therefore we have a flexible approach to what we get up to.

 

Join up with Vatsim in the GA Parking area (or somewhere else suitable for your plane, NOT on a runway!) in an aeroplane you're comfortable with and know where the buttons are! Also can you please set your clock to daylight settings, I usually knock 12 hours off the actual time and set it to June 21st to ensure daylight.

 

Note to existing and experienced pilots

 

The usual request...if you are not a new pilot, please do NOT fly into Biggin for the New Pilots Night. Too many other aircraft on frequency tends to disrupt the flow of the evening and make it more difficult for the mentoring to take place.

Regards,

 

David