Evan Reiter

There is a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) located over Cape Cod from August 10 to 19 for VIP movement. The TFR covers the majority of the Cape TRACON, centered on KMVY but also covering KEWB, KACK, and KHYA. You can view the TFR on http://www.skyvector.com (find KACK, then turn on “Temporary Flight Restrictions” under “Layers”). You can also see a graphical depiction of the TFR as well as the full set of restrictions on the FAA’s TFRs site. For one of the first times on BVA, we’ll be actively simulating the restrictions associated with this TFR while ATC is online. The objective of doing so is to increase awareness of TFRs and other types of Special Use Airspace on our server. While you can try to decode the FAA’s language using the link above, we've explained the TFR in what we hope are friendlier terms below. There are two different parts of this TFR. The “outer core” consists of the airspace within a 30nm radius of KMVY. The “inner cores” consist of two 10nm areas located over the KMVY and KFMH airports. Each have their own restrictions. Both cores extend from the surface to 18,000’ MSL. In the “outer core”, VFR and IFR aircraft are permitted to operate provided: The aircraft has filed and is on an active VFR or IFR flight plan. The aircraft has been assigned and is squawking a discrete squawk code. The aircraft maintains two-way radio communication with ATC. The two “inner cores” will affect flight operations to/from KACK and at KMVY. Flights to/from KACK are not permitted to transit the “inner cores” and our normal preferred routes (V141 or FREDO) do transit this airspace. Thus, until the end of the TFR, aircraft flying to and from Nantucket should use “LFV” as their route. Aircraft departing KMVY must have an active VFR or IFR flight plan and be in contact with ATC. Commercial aircraft wishing to fly to KMVY can do so normally, provided they are in contact with ATC at all times while in the TFR (and on an active flight plan). General aviation aircraft are required to depart one of three “gateway” airports (in real-world, you would have to be screened by the TSA at one of these three locations): Westchester County Airport (KHPN) Barnstable Municipal Airport (KHYA) Providence/Green State Airport (KPVD) For BVA’s purposes, General Aviation aircraft will be permitted to land at KMVY only under the following circumstances: The aircraft has departed from one of the gateway airports listed above The aircraft files a direct VFR or IFR flight plan from a gateway airport to KMVY The aircraft is squawking a discrete, ATC-assigned code The aircraft remains in contact with ATC throughout the flight, and does not stop from the gateway airport to KMVY As mentioned, the purpose of simulating this TFR is to improve awareness of Special Use Airspace and to help all of us learn more about how TFRs work. Pilots that are unfamiliar with, or violate, the TFR won’t be punished, and no TFR restrictions apply when ATC is offline. Our pilots, controllers, and even administrators (read: me) are learning, so please show your patience and understanding at all times while practicing operations around this TFR. Post your questions here and let us know of any issues that may arise (as well as anything about this forum post that may be unclear). For more information on Temporary Flight Restrictions and other types of Special Use Airspace, please click here. As a reminder, the TFR becomes active at 1900 UTC (3pm ET) tomorrow (August 10). Enjoy!

As I recollect, it was a fun and well-attended event but the usual issues associated with splitting traffic (e.g., everyone goes to one airport and meanwhile the others are fairly quiet) happened. I think it's something we could try again though, if there is an interest. It was certainly fun from an ATC perspective!

Due to ongoing website maintenance, we are unable to send an Event Reminder email for this upcoming Pack The Pattern event. Please view details about the event below. Pack The Pattern (KSJC, Wednesday, July 3, 8-10pm ET): Despite San Jose being the largest city in the Bay Area, SJC is the smallest of the three Bay Area airline airports(8.4 million annual passengers in 2011), with less than a quarter of the passengers of San Francisco International Airport (SFO), and fewer passengers than Oakland International Airport (OAK). [Wikipedia] Our Pack The Pattern event features San Jose (KSJC) from 8-10pm ET on Wednesday, July 3. This city airport features neat approaches through a valley and over the city. There are no required scenery updates or preferred routes. Just spawn in your favorite aircraft, fly IFR or VFR circuits at the airport, and enjoy the scenery and busy frequencies.

Hopefully it's obvious that I'm not part of the decision-making on the flight plan or aircraft type. Presumably you can ask the group when we all get together about flying to different airports or different aircraft types but in my opinion the purpose of the event is more about connecting with other flight simulation communities than it is about the flying itself. For that reason, I'm not planning to include "BVA" anywhere in my login name.

Wanted to let everyone here know that one of our fellow multiplayer communities, msFlights.net, is holding its second Cross-Community Flight on Saturday, July 6 at 3pm ET. In this event, members from multiple FSX communities gather on one server for a VFR (uncontrolled) flight across several airports. Thanks to our work with FSX Beyond GameSpy, BVA has been invited to participate. This is BVA's first Cross-Community Flight and as such the A-Team will be checking it out before we make it a part of our official rotation. That being said, I encourage as many BVA members as possible to join me in the event. It will be hosted on the server and TeamSpeak of the Eastern Hops community. As you know, BVA plays an important role in the multiplayer community. Working together with other flight simulation communities helps strengthen the world of multiplayer and lets us (as individuals) make some connections with users we otherwise wouldn't be able to connect with. I strongly encourage you to join in the event with me to see what it's all about! Please view the link below for details: http://msflights.net/forum/showthread.p ... -6-3pm-EDT)

Our maintenance activities are continuing. Most of the website and forum functionality works as it should although we still have several items we are working on. We will update the status of the website within the next few hours. Thank you for your continued patience. We're almost there!

Reminder that website maintenance is expected to begin at approximately 6:00pm ET this evening and continue for several hours. Intermittent outages are possible throughout the maintenance window. We will post again when normal operations resume.

Non-U.S. airports won't have approach plates (or charts) published on the standard sources like SkyVector or AirNav. Sources for international charts vary in quality and comprehensiveness as few other governments are as good as the U.S. about making their charts freely available to the public. For TNCM, you can find the chart on BVA's application: www.bostonvirtualatc.com/charts.

Not a pain at all! We had fun trying to coordinate the go around and guessing at which parts of our transmissions got through!

Good question! When you set up sharing, there is an option to declare your intentions. Just type the "JOIN ME" in there (use a normal callsign).

We have looked at the cause of the technical issues during last night’s event. Unfortunately, resolving connectivity/networking problems is very complex, particularly without physical access to routing equipment. At this time there is no indication of any server security issues. The server was online throughout the event and did not “crash” or shut down at any time. FlightDesk and FSX server applications were running for the duration of the event. Several members (approximately 13 pilots, 30+ observers, and most users of TeamSpeak) remained connected throughout the event while approximately 20 were disconnected in a short period of time about halfway through the event. This means the most likely case is that a router in the “pipe” between our server and most of our members’ connections was the root cause of the issue. Every computer takes a different “path” to connect to the server but at various points those paths converge. It’s likely at one of those convergence points that the router (part of the “internet backbone” and external to BVA) caused the issues for all the computers following that path. Of course we’re as sorry and frustrated as you are to see the busy event disrupted by technical issues beyond the control of any of us. However, we’re happy to announce that we’ll be hosting the same KCLE & KDTW event next week. As a bonus, we’ve updated the scenery update for KCLE to 1.1 to reflect the latest changes to the airport (part of ongoing construction) and flight checked all ILS approaches to ensure that localizers and glideslopes are functioning properly. The latest version of the scenery download is accessible on the Regional Circuit Page.

We will repeat this event (KCLE & KDTW) in next week's Regional Circuit.

Tonight's Regional Circuit was interrupted by technical issues. Over 30 pilots were connected at the time; most pilots and controllers lost connection to the server for a brief period. At this time, we are investigating the situation and will provide additional details as they become available. The server is currently online and appears to be stable. More to come.

Yes, as well as the magnetic variation correction (that will impact even those aircraft updated by Navigraph as I understand things).

This post has been updated with a new freeware source for default GPS aircraft and the FSX radar. I strongly recommend all users, even those who only fly payware aircraft, use these links to update their fixes, navaids, and magnetic variation data. It is great stuff -- so great that it even removes the now-decommissioned BDL VOR!

Please join us for an interactive discussion on FSX as well as the future of flight simulation within our community on Saturday, May 25 at 4pm ET. We'll discuss your opinions on the best possible FSX configuration and discuss some of the other platforms that are available. If you have experience with X-Plane or other Microsoft platforms, we hope you will share it! We will use a voice platform called TeamSpeak 3 to host the session. The software is available for free http://www.teamspeak.com. Once the program is installed, connect to the server using the information below. Make sure to set your microphone input and transmit key in the Lobby of the server. Please do not use voice activation. Use the Following Login Credentials: Nickname: BVA Username - First Name (e.g., Tofutwitch11 - Tom) Server Address: teamspeak.bostonvirtualatc.com:9989 Server Password: OfficeHours!

Wow...almost looks like we wouldn't have to restart the server tonight as the real-world forecast for Boston and Nantucket shows exactly what I was planning for the event! That being said, the server restarts will go ahead as planned. You can expect the weather to mimic what is shown in the forecasts below. KACK 191124Z 1912/2012 18014KT 1/4SM FG VV001 FM191700 19018KT 1SM BR OVC150 FM200200 19026KT 1/2SM FG OVC003 WS020/21060KT FM200500 20029KT 1/2SM SHRA FG OVC008 WS020/21065KT FM200900 21024KT 2SM SHRA BR OVC008 KBOS 191124Z 1912/2018 20011KT P6SM BKN020 FM191400 20012KT P6SM BKN250 FM192300 20016KT P6SM OVC015 FM200000 20016KT P6SM OVC010 WS020/35045KT FM200300 20018KT 3SM -SHRA BR OVC008 WS020/20050KT FM200800 27013KT 3SM -SHRA BR OVC008 FM200900 30010KT P6SM OVC015 FM201300 27009KT P6SM BKN040

In order to set custom weather for our KACK & KBOS Bad Weather Regional Circuit Challenge (8-11pm ET on Friday, April 19), the FSX server will be restarted on Friday at 7:00pm ET and 11:45pm ET. FlightDesk, Live ATIS, and FSX will be temporarily unavailable during the restart; the website and forums will not be affected. Please time your activity on the server so as not to lose your flight when the server is restarted. We'll see just how nasty the weather ends up being. Plan for a typical Cape Cod evening...plenty of mist and fog, some light rain, and reasonable winds. The visibility will be the biggest factor.

KRDD sounds like a lot of fun! While we provide preferred routes and airports we encourage pilots and controllers to explore other airports throughout the Getaway. Hope to see a few controllers online in that region.

This NOTAM details procedures for operating in an uncontrolled/untowered airport environment in the United States. For BVA’s purposes, an untowered airport is any airport which would normally be untowered as well as any controlled airport that is uncontrolled due to ATC availability. At untowered airports, aircraft use standardized flight patterns and radio communications to operate safely without the coordination and traffic advisory assistance of a controller. Untowered airport procedures include communications and entries to and exits from the traffic pattern. Untowered airport procedures are designed to give pilots maximum awareness of other aircraft operating in the area. If all pilots follow the recommended procedures, aircraft will be able to safely merge into and out of the traffic flow without posing a threat to each other. The attached document was last updated on September 6, 2020. Untowered Airport Operations.pdf

Glad the flight went well! That Expressway Visual is a fun one that I do recommend (maybe not late at night). I do suggest that you give it a try when you have a bit of time (and maybe in free flight first) as I expect you'll enjoy it. We've written a bit of instructional material to help orient you to the flight here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3703. See you online again soon!

Special Use Airspace is designed to keep certain flight activities in one area and to keep unrelated operations away. This airspace can be temporary in nature (i.e. a temporary restriction of airspace due to a special activity), intermittent (i.e. an area reserved for military operations at specific times), or permanently restricted (i.e. airspace surrounding the White House and other Capitol buildings). The attached pilot reference document, updated on May 4, 2020, provides additional information about the types of special use airspace and the related implications for aircraft operations. Special Use Airspace.pdf

Sounds like an interesting idea to me (without having looked at the area in any detail). I think our next Getaway is already planned but we can definitely look into this one for the future. Any others find this airspace and airport combination interesting?

Sounds like a fun time! Sorry I can't be around this weekend (will be out of town without FS stuff). Friendly reminder that if you are flying gliders, please do not use the FSX towplanes. Motorized gliders, winch-launching, or using the Map to get yourself airborne are all fine.

I wanted to let our forum regulars know that our next Challenge event features Helena (KHLN) from 8-10pm ET on Thursday, February 28. The event is all about flying IFR procedures correctly. In a "Pack The Pattern" format, pilots will fly the Helena Three (or Divide 1) departure procedures (pull the chart and you'll see why), and then are encouraged to try some of the more unique approaches into the airport (how does a nice LOC/DME BC-C approach sound?) or even a few laps in a holding pattern. We'll be doing the event in real-world weather but it's a great opportunity to practice instrument flying in a busy environment with full ATC coverage. http://www.bostonvirtualatc.com/Events/Challenge.aspx In what is clearly a failed attempt at keeping the content on the page short, you'll notice we've summarized flying the departure procedure correctly but haven't gone into much detail about tracking VOR radials (required to fly the DP) or flying non-precision approaches. Instead, we're hoping pilots with questions about flying the procedure or using non-GPS navigation will check out the Pilot Ratings Program flights applicable to those subjects or post their questions here. If you've ever been afraid of filing a complicated SID, don't like NY airports because you don't know when to make that turn to join the CRI VOR radial, or just want some extra practice in a more relaxed environment, controllers during the Challenge will be on hand to help you with any questions you have and can give you feedback on your performance flying the departure procedure. It's a great opportunity for new members who aren't familiar with IFR flying or regulars who just want a little more practice without the help of an FMC or GPS. Looking forward to another fun event! PS/EDIT: If you can think of any fun/complex departure procedures or instrument approaches that you'd like featured during a similar event, feel free to post those here as well. I think this concept will be one of the regular Challenge features, like our Bad Weather Regional Circuit, VFR events, or the SFRA Challenge.