Flight Bids/Live Map Issues - Heads up to management

mattymsboi · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:44 am

Hey guys, right so I was looking around the flight schedules and I decided to choose 2, 1 I would fly now and the other one later, well I chose flight 2024 first, and I am currently en route flying it, and I chose flight 4104 for later. Now on Live Map its showing me flying flight 4104, showing that I need to travel 1301miles and thats about 5 hours..... When im really flying a 50minute flight with no where near the mileage as the one thats showing.

Flight 4104 itself is only 394.878 miles away, so im scratching my head trying to figure this one out!

cva3906 · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:19 am

When you select flight from VA, it will load the first flight that you bid on. I am guessing that you bid on Flight 4104 first.

Rob Vanderkam · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:02 pm

If so, I wonder what the flight report will say when you're done.

mattymsboi · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:49 pm

Well the weird part is that I bid on the flight 4104 AFTER I had bigged on flight 2024, thats why Im so confused, but there must have been a glitch somewhere because the live map was showing an insane amount of mileage for flight 4104...

Also I wanted your opinions on what happened to me when I was coming in for a landing at Boston. I took off from Yarmouth and there was no online ATC there so I took off and procceded en route to Boston, once Boston was in range I got IFR Clearance and I was dealing with approach.

So I am following approaches directions and all of a sudden I don't get anymore, so I keep going, past the airport, then I started to wonder what happened soI tuned in and I was told that Boston approach was shutting down and my radar services were terminated, and I was told to tune into our VA private channel.

I was kind of confused then so I diden't realize to check the ATIS for Boston, so I made a 360 and came in for a landing, once on the ground, ATC on the ground were upset with me saying I landed without clearance and that the Tower diden't even know I was comming to Boston!

I now Im new to VATSIM but do you think this is my fault? I feel kinda bad about it, I coulda caused a crash =/

CVA0102 · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:43 pm

Hi Matt,

So I'm assuming you were originally on with Boston Centre or Boston Approach. Usually they will inform you if they are going offline and to tune to advisory which is 122.80/UNICOM (not the CVA company frequency).

If for some reason they dissapear without informing you that they're going offline you can usually see that because they will no longer appear on your ATC list when you hit the ATC button on your FSInn control panel. When this happens you should switch to advisory channel until you come in range of the Approach ATC at your destination area (in this case Boston). If there is no approach ATC then you stay on advisory/UNICOM until you are in range of Boston Tower.

You can always see if Tower is online again by clicking the ATC button on your FSInn. If there is no tower on than you should advise other Boston traffic on the advisory channel of your intention to land. Let them know when you're on final approach and what runway you're landing on so that you don't find someone pulling on to the runway when you are about to touchdown.

If there is a tower on line you need to contact them and let them know that you are landing at Boston. You would say something like this..

"Boston twr Canadian 0102 inbound to land runway XX"

I hope this helps.

CVA0014 · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:48 pm

If you do a 360 you're still going the same way.

I tried bidding on 2 flights once and FSacars didn't follow the order I selected them. I had to select the 2 flights backwards to be able to fly them in order, so I stopped trying to prepare ahead of time and now do one flight at a time.

I'm also having a problem with the Login feature. The site won't log me in automatically like other places. I found that by clicking 2-3 times on the Login button it eventually remembers who I am.

mattymsboi · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:38 pm

Yeah I guess I will just do 1 flight at a time xD, and Boston Approach only told me they were shutting down when I called in to see if they forgot about me or something :p. By the time I realized the weren't going to set me up for an approach I was so far away from the airport I needed to act fast, this was a CVA flight and it was only supposed to be a 47min flight, ended up being 1 hour and 40minutish flight... I know I should have contacted Tower but at that point in time I was so confused and all I wanted was to land, ATIS and Tower were not in my mind at that moment.

CVA0014 · Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:28 pm

For multis, I try to log on before 8pm and start making flight plans in FS-X. I save them and load them up as I need them. It takes me a while to do so I try to set all that up before the first leg.

I haven't tried bidding on 3-4 flights in CVA yet, I'll have to try and see what order they come out in FSacars.

CVA8037 · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 12:39 am

I'll add my two cents about your flight bidding problem. This could have happened to you too.

It's happened to me more than once that I've been logged on to the CVA website, got distracted by some issue in the house, come back and placed my bid. Once FSACARS was up and running, no flight information would be imported when I pressed the import from VA button.

This was because my login expired on the website. Everything looked normal because I didn't navigate away from the page. When I pressed 'Add to Bid' the words changed to 'Added', even though I was actually logged out and the website viewed me as a guest.

I thought this was weird so I went back to my pilot centre and the website had me login again. Then I checked my 'View my flight bids' button and no flights were bid on. I redid the bidding process and suddenly I could import the information just fine.

Here's what I'm thinking happened and I could be wrong but here's a possible explanation:

You logged in and were idle for some time on the flight schedules page then you pressed 'add to bid'. Before you imported your information into FSACARS you at some point logged in again and added the second flight to the bidding system.(which would have been the only one registered by the site) Then you imported the second flight unknowingly and began flying the first one you bid on.

Were you required to login to the site again somewhere in this process?

To our super awesome website guys:

What is the time limit before we have to login again anyway? I find it a tad short. I usually have the site open for the entire length of a flight, including preflight planning, actual flight, then if it's a multi I upload pics and write about it in the forum. This can take from one hour to four for me. During this time I usually login multiple times because I've timed out.

mattymsboi · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 12:56 am

Thats actually a possiblilty, It was my first CVA flight using VATSIM and I was busy preparing things on both computers, so its possible my login expired.

I'll try and make flight bids as soon as I log on the site so theres no race against time to place my bid and having to check if it went through or not :p

Rob Vanderkam · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:47 am

Getting logged out has never happened to me. I usually keep the CVA site open while I fly - an hour or two.

I do have a wierd login thing - I am shown the login page instead of the Pilot Center page, but when I log in, it says I already am logged in, even if I've just started my computer. I now just hit the login button without even filling in my name or password.

mattymsboi (can't remember your name), if ATC wants you to check in, they should pm you. On VATSIM, that means a .msg request that shows up on your screen in a separate window telling you to contact them.

mattymsboi · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:58 am

Yeah I get that weird login also, I just assume the system remembers my computers id and auto-logs me in or something, and my name is Matt =D.

And oh ok, I always thought ATC woulden't talk to you unless you started the flight plan or what have you.

CVA0014 · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:01 pm

That's entirely possible Paul.

mattymsboi · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:22 pm

I figured this is still under the topic of Flight Bids, can I fly the multi's even if the aircraft recommended is too high for me?

CVA0014 · Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:00 pm

Yup, that's the nice thing with multis, you can fly whatever they slap up there.

Flight Bids/Live Map Issues - Heads up to management

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