Evan Reiter

It's always tricky to find a day that will work for everyone. I've wanted to get back into having the double-play events (Rc on Tuesday and Friday) but I've been waiting for a good event in our home airspace that we can do in conjunction with a bad-weather event (as requested by other members). Keep an eye out for it in the next few weeks and we'll see how it goes.

Good point. Let's ask that next week...followed by "which non-ZBW ARTCC would you most like to see staffed more often?"

All user have been re-activated and everyone should be able to login to the website fine. Again, please let us know if you have any issues with the site. The last post about an issue prompted a long response from me because I wanted to explain my rationale to everyone and it took a long post to do that. But without getting information from people about issues, I can't fix them, and I am always grateful to the people that are willing to stand up to let us know something is wrong. That's why one of my personal development goals is to be more responsive and open when responding to problems in crisis situations. For now, let's hope that none of that will happen again now that the site has been restored...

To address additional functionality concerns, I have reverted the website back to the previous version we were using. While it will now mean manual adjustments of any text, we also have our normal editor back for ATCs, and should have resolved the login issues we were having. We will thoroughly test the new version of DotNetNuke while waiting for a patch to come out to fix the issues you noticed. As part of reverting the website, some user accounts were deleted. If your BVA ID is on the list below, you will not be able to sign in to FlightDesk or the website today. I will manually re-create your accounts when I have time, probably tonight, and be addressing you individually by e-mail. ZEGO Blue_Skies97 CM039 gruffalo95 president757 Again, please let me know of any issues right away (as Tom and Brandon have) so that we can address them quickly. Thanks again!

...and now the site is broken. Working on it.

I made this post in a response to a question Tom asked me in a restricted section of the forums and thought it was worth passing along to the general community as well. Good question. The content management system that we use -- DotNetNuke (DNN) -- works something like the OS on your computer in that regular updates come out for the software. The same is true with our forums. Normally these updates are minor, fixing small bugs and security holes. The forums were updated at the same time as the website but I haven't noticed a difference. I was expecting the same with the website. It's important to make the updates quickly because they often address security holes and make a big functionality improvement. The longer we wait, and the more updates we miss, the worse will be the eventual updgrade and the more likely that upgrade will be to, for want of a better term, blow up. However, it turns out DNN has totally re-done the interface of the website. This was unexpected. Nevertheless, it's something we had to do. The website on our previous ISP was so bug-ridden in part because we were using a version of the operating system that was 2.5 years old. We had to complete 2 years' worth of updates when we migrated the server over and that process caused all sorts of problems. When the ATC page broke a few months ago, it was because we updated a module that hadn't been touched since 2006. Ever since then we've been keeping up with the updates because eventually we would be in the same situation if we never updated. So your next question is probably "why didn't we test the update more thoroughly before we updated the site live?" That's a good question and the answer is two-fold. Firstly, it's impossible to update the site behind the scenes and then release it to you...there's just no functionality like that. It's not like we can make an update, test it, and then click "go" and let you all see it. The only thing we have been able to do -- thanks to the hard work of Phil, our soon-to-be DNN expert (we hope) -- is to have someone set up a local copy of DNN on their own machine. This can't be connected to our DNN, so any changes we make on our side have to be made again on his, users don't update, etc. But at least we have an idea as to what we're getting into. This situation was unique for several reasons. Firstly, a previous update we performed on the website on Sunday (a minor update) was completed incorrectly because we tried to do it at a time when multiple users were on the website (since neither Phil nor I could manage to stay awake until 3am like I did for this update). Consequently, several features (like the ability to change font sizes/colors) weren't working properly. When the newest version came out Thursday, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get the newest version installed to resolve the font bug and, since I had some time, dedicate another Friday night to BVA and stay awake until late to make that update at a time when nobody would be inconvenienced. Because Phil is on vacation, we weren't able to do our usual offline testing. On Saturday morning, as you saw from the original post, I completed the updates around 3am. Obviously we have a few issues that resulted from them -- these are the things you've been complaining about. It was a tough call: make the upgrade, fix the issues, but chance major changes, or wait for Phil to return, put up with the inability to make changes to fonts (for at least 2 weeks since next weekend is a long weekend), and then try to find another available time to do an upgrade. Contrary to popular belief, I actually don't like missing friends' birthday parties to be here making updates but I do because I'm afraid of what will happen if I try to make a major update to the site in the middle of the day. Evidently I chose wrong on this occasion. I apologize for the extreme inconvience you have been caused by the website's lack of functionality. I do not know DNN very well and am spread relatively thin but will do my best to research and fix any of the issues we've seen with the login and controllers' event sign-up. Since I can't reproduce the login issue, that one will be very difficult to fix. The controllers' sign-up will probably be resolved by making the event details pages into regular DNN pages rather than pop-up windows (which I've wanted to do for a little while anyway). If it makes you feel any better, Bill has also had to work hard on a fix for FlightDesk since the upgrade changed the way the login page is structured (not the way it functions) and that meant no users could sign in to FlightDesk. We're all scrambling to give you the best possible experience; I'm sorry we can't do it fast enough. I'm also sorry that I wasn't able to perform a seamless upgrade. Hopefully DNN will come out with a fix for the issues with the login page and we'll have a fully-functional website again soon.

I am unable to reproduce the error.

Website maintenance complete. We have performed a MAJOR overhaul to the main website's backend; this should not be too apparent to users but there may be a few pages that have been modified. If you notice anything strange about the website, or any pages that do not look as they should, please let us know!

The website and forums may be offline temporarily starting at 11:30am on Friday, July 22 and continuing until 2-4am on Saturday, July 23.

Our maintenance is now complete.

The ISP's maintenance is now complete. BVA will be performing upgrades of our website and forums for the next few minutes. You may experience some downtime with both applications but should have full access restored shortly.

We have featured airports in the Caribbean and Hawaii during our Getaway events to both locations. We do consistent Rc events in Hawaii and the Caribbean as well. I'm not sure when the next one will be coming up since we were in the Caribbean not long ago.

That scenery is entirely compatible. Enjoy!

Our ISP will be taking our website and forums offline for approximately 8 hours beginning on July 16 at 1am ET for file system maintenance. This maintenance work is being performed externally by our ISP. This outage will not affect our FSX server, but it does appear that both our website and forums will be offline for the duration of the maintenance. Our ISP states the maintenance is "required to correct problems with the file system and provide more reliable system performance".

We had a great time in Europe this afternoon featuring EGCC and EGPF in the first leg of our European Tour. The events will continue on weekend and weekday afternoons going forward. In addition to working in some new phraseology, a few of our controllers (myself included, unfortunately) tried out their British accents on frequency. I recorded a snapshot of each one so we could ask you...which controller has the best British accent? ChrisOlmstead.WAV[/attachment:rqvatf6z] Cpais.wav[/attachment:rqvatf6z] Evanet.wav[/attachment:rqvatf6z] Ferrari308guy.wav[/attachment:rqvatf6z] regs695.WAV[/attachment:rqvatf6z]

Fortune really has nothing to do with it; "BVA's administration" has been a little busy when it comes to events. Minor things like responding to every single request for Regional Circuits by juggling our schedule and planning the European Tour, on which the poster quoted above spent a lot of time working, have kept us busy. The European Tour has been a priority for slightly longer than a foul weather event. Given my real-world work constraints, I would have to restart the server at approximately 7:30pm ET to set the weather before the event. I'd rather not do that right before the Regional Circuit event so what about if we bring back our old "double play" concept? The next time we have a Tuesday Night Rc in the Boston/New York area, we'll do it again on the following Friday (assuming there is no conflict) and have foul weather set at one of the airports that night. We cannot do for this KACK & KLGA event because although the airports would be ideal for it, we have a GA Fly-in that Friday night. Since I am liable to forget, I will rely on you folks. When you see an event upcoming that will work, give me at least 1 weeks' notice via these forums. In other words, next time you see in the "coming up next week" box two northeast airports, let me know and we'll set it up.

Real-world: Supplement to CAP413 Radiotelephony Manual - A quick reference guide to UK Phraseology A condensed version was written these forums at: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1474

Phraseology Quick Reference Guide.pdf[/attachment:a6ahnuyd] A huge thanks to Claudio (Cpais) who created this document, along with Pierre (Pierul) and Josh (TheNavyReapers) for review.

Let's discuss during Office Hours next weekend.

KTPA/KPBI is a bit longer than I'd like to see in most circuit events but I will happily add it to the list. Unfortunately we won't get to it before the Getaway.

Our next Pack the Pattern will be held at KVNY, per your request. Good idea!

Are you suggesting that we have R, Cl, G, T, D, A, and C for 6 major airports? That's going to (with the adjoining centers) work out to 20-30 controllers online. I don't think we have the pilot or technological base to support that type of ATC.

All of these routes have been added to the list except for KSEA/KPDX since it's already there twice and will be a candidate for the Getaway Rc to that area. For what it's worth, we have featured KTUL, KICT, KPDX, KSEA, KATL, KGTF, KMSO, and KSTL in past events. However, I think all of the route pairings you have here except for KPDX/KSEA are new. I have a list going of 50+ Regional Circuits because the scenery design team needs some lead-time in determining which airports require updates. You probably won't see the first of these new routes for the next month or so, but I will sprinkle them in with the others.

Too long for an Rc.

I tend to pick Regional Circuit events that I've seen to be popular and those apparently tend to be along the coasts. However, as I've said in a number of places on the forums, you can request Rc destinations and those will be picked up and added to the schedule. Why don't you pick some airports that are 70-150nm apart, each with 7,000'+ runways, and post the pairs here? I'll add them in to our list of upcoming events. We've tried a tri-city Regional Circuit before and it really didn't go well; two of the airports were somewhat busy and the other one didn't get much. But the traffic was dispersed enough that we really didn't get a critical mass anywhere.