June New Pilots Night - 02/07/08 - 20:00LT

[David Winters 905945]

The June New Pilots Night is to be held on Monday 2nd starting at 20:00LT. The evening will take place at Biggin Hill (EGKB) and will probably be finished by 22:00. (Please note this is on Monday as oppposed the usual Tuesday slot!)

 

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 haven'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 mentoring rooms that we use.

 

Get the Charts for Biggin Hill

 

These charts can now be obtained free (and without registration) here:

 

http://www.nats-uk.ead-it.com/public/index.php%3Foption=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=29&Itemid=78.html

 

You will only need to download and print off the "Aerodrome Chart - ICAO"

 

A docomeent is also available detailing some of the procedures which will be specific for Biggin. This is not yet uploaded to the website, so those who are interested should send an email to new.pilots[at]vatsim-uk.co.uk . If, once having read this docomeent there are things you do not understand, please do not worry we will go through it all on the night!

 

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 for the duration of the training night.

 

Note to existing and experienced pilots

 

The usual plea, if you are not a new pilot please stay away from Biggin on this night. Extra traffic which is not involved in the mentoring gets in the way and makes the evening more difficult to manage.

 

Thanks,

 

David