Good afternoon!

Training Airport Expansion

I am pleased to announce that over the coming months we will be expanding the location of our OBS - S1 training airports to include East Midlands (EGNX) and London Stansted (EGSS).

Why the expansion?

Since the introduction of our OBS - S1 exams we have noticed an increase in the number of session students are having before they are submitted for their exam. This is resulting in the sweatbox positions for Manchester (EGCC) and Edinburgh (EGPH) being booked very frequently, which is limiting the opportunity for our S2 - and somewhat S3 - students to use sweatbox.

This expansion also allows us to expose students to a broader range of airports during the initial stages of their training, which we are hoping will increase the interest people have for controlling at these airports, improve traffic levels once students gain their S1, and have an overall net benefit on the traffic, training and usage of our smaller (but not necessarily quieter 💤) airports.

Finally, an exciting (uncontrollably exciting) event is on the horizon... 👀 Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 🛫! With release of the next generation of Flight Simulator, coupled with VATSIM's exciting partnership with Microsoft, it is inevitable that we will see an increase in traffic levels, demand for training, and general usage of the network. These extra training airports will allow us, if and when necessary, to increase our training capacity allowing more members to join the controlling world!

Structured OBS -S1 Training

As has been eluded to above, since the introduction of the OBS -S1 exams, we are seeing an increase in the number of session students are receiving before they are submitted for an exam. After many discussions looking at the possible causes of this, including but not limited to:

• A constant number of students with an increase in mentors availability leading to 'over-mentoring' in some situations.
• Natural apprehension of forwarding students for an exam, (perceived to be a more 'challenging' event in a students' training), leading to those just to make certain sessions.

We have decided to take this opportunity to introduce a pre-defined structure that students will follow during the initial stages of their training. This will be comprise of approximately 3 to 5 sessions where students will achieve certain learning objectives in each session. Our aim with this is to provide mentors, students and instructors a framework within which to work. What is taught during the initial stages is pre-defined, how a mentor achieves those learning objectives, is down to the skill and style of teaching of our mentors. These lesson can be combined together, repeated or adjusted in order to tailor to individual students, they will be there as a tool in the training toolbox 🧰.

I am excited for this change as this is an idea that has been thrown around within the training team for the past 12 months at all different levels of training, so we are very keen to see how its implementation goes.

The New Controller Training Group team will be working with members, mentors and instructors in order to create a structure which is realistic and practical. We hope to have significant headway on this project by the time MFS2020 launches and are optimistic that we will be able to trial this by the end of August.

Thanks,

Dan ✈️