Blogs

- Alex Ashley

All, It is with deep regret that over the last few days I have come to the difficult decision to resign from the role of Social Media Manager. With an increasingly busy personal life and with my acceptance of a role at a flight simulation service, I feel that I no longer have the time nor the energy to deliver what the community deserves. Since joining the team at the start of the year, I have been thrilled by the support I have received from both the staff group and membership alike -

Alex Ashley in Staff Changes

August 12, 2018

Web Services

Getting Started With Core

Core, the service that runs at https://core.vatsim.uk, is the backbone to the Web Services department. It has been a long time since it "just" handling sign on to all of our other services. Now, it is a platform that facilitates feedback, handles Visiting/Transferring applications, creates TeamSpeak registrations and more. Soon, it will become the shop window of the division too, handling our public facing website and the content that it provides. To give you an idea of how much it is used.

VATSIM UK Web Services in Web Services

August 12, 2018

S2 and S3 Theory Questions: Revisited

Many of you who have taken your S2 and S3 theory exams recently may have noticed that quite a few of the questions weren't exactly relevant and some were, well, too easy. It turns out that some of our theory questions are very old, with some of the S3 questions dating back to the pre-GRP days when S2 didn't exist and S3 was in-part a TWR rating. You will all be glad to know (or maybe not, if you were hoping for an easy pass!) that we have removed a lot of questions and added new ones to ref

Andy Ford in ATC Training

August 12, 2018

Training Group Manager

The application period for the position of Training Group Manager has now concluded. I would like to say a big thank you to those who took time to apply, we had a strong pool of applications this round. We are pleased to announce that Lee Roberts has been appointed as a Training Group Manager. Lee will be working closely with Nick and Alex as we look to change up the way that we manage our training groups. Instead of our traditional TG1/TG2 structure, the TGM's will be split by level -

Andy Ford in Staff Changes

August 11, 2018

S3 Training at Heathrow

With the appropriate staff and support now in place, we are pleased to announce the resumption of Approach Radar (S2->S3) training for UK Students at Heathrow. Heathrow will draw from the existing waiting lists of TG1 and TG2. When a training place becomes available, it will be offered to the first eligible student on one of the lists. Completion of training will result in the awarding of an S3 rating and the Heathrow APP Major Endorsement. Solo Approach Validations (SAV's) will be handl

Andy Ford in ATC Training

August 6, 2018

Changes to CTS Emailing

Due to the incredibly large volume of emails currently flowing from the CTS (because there's a lot of ATC and Pilot sessions right now!) which pushes us very close to our monthly quota, we're going to be be removing a couple of the email categories. These ones have been removed partly due to the amount of traffic they generate and also their perceived usefulness. They are as follows: Notification to mentors that a session request has come in. Notification to mentors that they h

Andy Ford in United Kingdom

August 5, 2018

Heathrow Training Group Instructor

We are pleased to announce that James Yuen has been appointed as the Training Group Instructor for TG Heathrow. James will be working closely with Oliver and myself to re-ignite the S2->S3 training program at Heathrow, details of which will be announced over the next week. Good luck, James!

Andy Ford in Staff Changes

August 1, 2018

Pilot Training

Pilot Training Q2 2018 Summary

Hi all, A quick summary from the Pilot Training Department of Q2! Q2 Progress We have made great headway in our mentor recruitment which is reflected by the number of sessions conducted as the months of Q2 progress. Oliver Hall has departed the team as IFR Flight Instructor, this role will soon be filled. FTE production has been slow over the past 6 weeks due to availability with the team, but we will gear back up as this month continues! But our biggest de

Daniel Crookes in Pilot Training

July 13, 2018

ATC Rating Progression: The Story So Far

Hi Folks, We're now well into the second half of the year and I've taken this opportunity to have a look at the statistics and let you know how we're doing. The good news is, we're way way up on exam passes, compared to where we were this time last year! To this day in 2017, we had a total of 16 exam passes: 8 TWR 6 APP 2 CTR So far this year, we've had a total of 41 exam passes: 29 TWR 11 APP 1 CTR As well as the above, we currently ha

Andy Ford in ATC Training

July 13, 2018

S1 AFISO/AG Validation: Additional Airfields

Now that things have had time to settle, we're adding some additional aerodromes to the list of those that S1 rated members holding the AFISO/AG validation may control. They are as follows: Barra (EGPR) Bodmin (EGLA) - airfield information sufficient to VATSIM needs is available on the airfields website - Bodmin does not feature in the AIP. Wolverhampton / Halfpenny Green (EGBO) We decided not to add Barrow/Walney Island (EGNL) at this time, due to instrument approach an

Andy Ford in ATC Training

July 7, 2018

Shifting Focus: Enroute Training

Having restructured the Tower and Radar training schemes, we are now in a position to take the final step, release of the first version of our restructured C1 syllabus. Thank you to everyone who commented and gave feedback. The key points of this re-thinking of our syllabus are as follows: A number of competencies have been designated as self-taught. In the past, these were included in practical mentoring reports, which led to some students assuming that the mentor would teach them. N

Andy Ford in ATC Training

July 6, 2018

[MINUTES] DSG Meeting - 23rd May 2018

Hi all, The DSG Meeting Minutes are now available for download here: https://vatsim.uk/download/info/?downloadID=00412. Any questions can be asked below or in confidence via the Helpdesk. Thanks

VATSIM UK in United Kingdom

July 4, 2018

Web Services Assistant

Hi all, I was pleasantly surprised at the volume of strong submissions to the announcement of a vacancy within the Web Services team. After spending some time reviewing them, I am pleased to announce that Callum A will be joining the team. Callum has spent time on the ATC staff team in the past and is very familiar with the Division's operations. His past experiences with the technologies that we utilise will be of great assistance as we take on some rather large projects in the comi

VATSIM UK Web Services in Staff Changes

July 1, 2018

James Edwards

Dear all, It is with regret that James Edwards has resigned from his role of TG2 Training Group Manager this afternoon, effective immediately. James has been maintaining the administrative operation (mainly behind the scenes) for TG2 for the past 6 months, ensuring that training runs smoothly for all involved. Please join me in thanking James for dedicating his time to the division. Alex

Alex Beard in Staff Changes

June 20, 2018

Web Department Changes

Folks I am making some changes to the Web Department. As you know web has been working as two teams over the past 14 months. This has really had its benefits, for example, the expansion of CORE and the introduction of Flight Training Exercises where the two teams worked hand in hand in launching these. Over the next 12 months, we will be launching a new website, start the migration of CTS into CORE as well as the rollout of a new ATC plugin. With this in mind, I have decided to brin

Simon Irvine in United Kingdom

June 13, 2018

Training Aerodrome Preferences

Under the old RTS' System and also under the early days of the new system, we took students aerodrome preference into account during the early stages of training and only offered the student a place when their chosen aerodrome came up. This sometimes led to students becoming disappointed in the waiting times if the student in front of them took longer to pass and thus held up a training place at their chosen aerodrome whilst their friends at other aerodromes passed before them. Under a new

Andy Ford in ATC Training

June 9, 2018

Reciprocating Effort

The re-drafting of the training syllabus has brought with it an encouragement for students to learn on their own, by designating significant portions as self-taught. That is, the student is expected to read the material on their own and bring any questions to sessions, not expect to have it spoon-fed to them by mentors. Most of you have risen to the challenge with enthusiasm. Of course, there are still one or two who aren't reciprocating the effort that their mentors are putting in to train

Andy Ford in ATC Training

June 8, 2018

VATSIM UK Live! 2018 - Bookings Now Open!

We are delighted to announce that bookings have opened this evening for VATSIM UK Live! which is taking place on the weekend of the 4th and 5th of August at Conference Aston. Tickets are priced at £30 for the weekend, or £20 for one day. We have also worked with Conference Aston to provide options for on-site accommodation (incl. breakfast). For more information on pricing, or anything about the weekend, visit the Live! website. We have also provided more detailed information about the g

Chris Pawley in United Kingdom

June 6, 2018

Returning Mentors: An Exercise In Trust

Effectively immediately, we are going to be trialling out a new policy for mentors returning to us after a break from the network. In the past, returning mentors were usually subject to the same training regime as new mentors, which was often discouraging. We're still quite unsure about this one - with some good arguments both supporting and refuting the idea. So, we thought the best thing to do was give it a go and see how it pans out. The trial process as follows: If a mentor has been "s

Andy Ford in ATC Training

May 29, 2018