JHB Newsletter

Airline News

Learning IVAO

The continuation of online flying with IVAO has been an interesting change. Our flying and controlling skills have had to improve but the transition has been less painless than some may have accepted. The bigger challenge has faced the controllers who have less freedom to move around airfields than we had on the FPI system.

There is more traffic on IVAO but it is not exactly frantic. This is helpful for newcomers to the system but more experience pilots may find the lack of busy sectors frustrating for their skill levels. The range of pilot experience in JHB is quite substantial so it is hard to balance the requirements of both ends of the spectrum - newcomers will find IVAO daunting and seasoned veterans may consider the system doesn't provide the challenge expected. IVAO UK is still growing though and I suspect that in time it will meet the needs of all.

Routes to Fly

Although most assignments are now flown online I have retained the JHB Route Pack pages for those interested in a fixed assignment list.

Included in this page is a new UK VFR Tour featuring flights around 100 England and Wales airports. Total distance is about 4800nm so it would take some time to complete. Included in the list are notes on each route and any controlled or restricted airspaces that need avoiding - primarily for users who wish to try the tour on VATSIM or IVAO.

Rogues Gallery

The Rogue's Gallery is building up very nicely - many thanks to Alastair for the idea and to everyone who has contributed. You can see the page at JHB Rogue's Gallery.

Pilot Logbook

Ernie has asked for a simple decimal hours to hours and minutes calculator so I have created a basic spreadsheet for this. At the same time I looked at my flight logbook spreadsheet and modified this for possible JHB use. The original was slightly too complex in that it had columns for single engine, multi engine, I/R,  day and night flying. There isn't any real need to split JHB flight hours into single and multi so I removed these - but I left day and night and P1/P2 in. Here's a view of the input data part of the sheet.

It's quite straightforward. If the Captain column is Self then hours are shown as P1, otherwise any other data flags the hours as P2. Airborne and landing times are 24 hour system without any divider so 2245 is OK but 22.45 or 22:45 will show funny results. The table will recognise flights that run past midnight (see the third and last entry) but it can't accept flights over 24 hours. If you enter any night flying value it will split the day/night portions of the flight automatically. In the night column the format SHOULD include a decimal point and a 90 minute period should be entered as 1.30.

At the bottom of the spreadsheet there is a breakdown of the flight hours in both decimal and HH:MM. The latter is as follows:

If you highlight the columns from Date to Remarks you can Copy and Paste the data into an email - as long as this is set to Plain Text. If left in HTML it copies the actual spreadsheet itself and I can't use this for flight reports. In Plain Text it should appear in the email similar to below. The format is slightly uneven but it will be read by the compiler OK.

24-Nov-05 PA27 GCALL Self P1 Ronaldsway Heathrow 1400 1600 2:00 Cloudy
25-Nov-05 B737 GJHBP Self P1 Heathrow Athens     1845 2245 4:00 Via TGO
15-Dec-05 A320 GJHBH Self P1 Athens Karachi      2345 0515 5:30
17-Dec-05 C172 GJHBD Orzel P2 Elstree Leeds      1200 1530 3:30 Orzel got lost
23-Dec-05 C172 GJHBD Self P1 Leeds Elstree       1015 1230 2:15
26-Dec-05 A340 GJHBR Self P1 Gatwick Mexico City 1500 0145 10:45

As it is just a test file for now I have only included enough entries for about 150 flights. If the spreadsheet proves popular I can extend this and maybe add any other info that you may think useful. You can download a copy from HERE

PCI Forum Signature files

Mike Brook has kindly provided us all with images that can be used in forum signatures. Although intended for the PCI forums they can be used with any forums (like AVSIM) that allow pictures to be embedded in the signature file. The pictures look like this:

For use in a forum signature you just go to your Profile section and add the code to the signature block. In my Sig box I have entered:

and this appears in forum posts as:

For your own signature add what plain text you want and then copy the [IMG] line in green above into your Sig box. Replace the JHB007 part with your own callsign.

IVAO Status Indicator

This neat script can be used for forum signatures or added to web pages. Pilots can choose from an airline image or pilot status image as shown below:

Useful Resources

Peter Dodds has reminded me that he has a web site up at http://www.cixvfrclub.org.uk which may have some material of interest to JHB pilots. Like myself Peter has written several tutorials for FS pilots and will be adding to these over time. Worth keeping a watch on..

John Woodside, HC JHB