Over 20 (or close to) Years Of Being on Vatsim

after flying nearly 22 years on the sim and adding up to nearly 1000 hours there as well. Its interesting to see where I've come over the last number of years!

below is the tracking of all my flights

https://stats.vatsim.net/search_id.php?id=821008
https://stats.vatsim.net/search_id.php?id=1054547

Interestingly enough there is my last flight ill ever fly on VATSIM, a rudimentary flight from Yellowknife to Hay River back in October. I could possibly move back on it if I were to upgrade this computer to Win 7 or Win 10...

The last flight was with this callsign:BFL0200 with the flight times of 10/13/19 00:27 and
10/13/19 01:26, from CYZF-CYHY (2), with a time of 0:59 minutes.

Hope you enjoy my story

if you cant get your plane to turn in flightsim..



Often times some aircraft (default and addon) in fs9 seem to not want to turn very well...some say you can hit F11 and F12 respectively to turn the plane back and forth from left to right, where F11 makes you move to the left and F12 to the right...but some say there are better and easier ways.

Go into the aircraft.cfg (of each aircraft) and edit what I show below....

Here's the contact points from the Milton Shupe Grumman S2F Tracker that hasn't been changed as it wouldn't turn left or right...

"[contact_points]

static_pitch = 3.93
static_cg_height = 6.75
tailwheel_lock = 0
gear_system_type = 1
max_number_of_points = 9

point.0 = 1.000, 14.087, 0.000, -7.808, 1950.000, 0.000, 1.050, 180.0, 0.180, 6.142, 1.000, 6.000, 6.000, 0.000, 150.000, 150.000
point.1 = 1.000, -.95010, -9.30, -7.604, 2500.000, 1.000, 1.500, 0.000, 0.921, 1.260, 0.800, 6.000, 6.000, 2.000, 150.000, 150.000
point.2 = 1.000, -.95010, 9.30, -7.604, 2500.000, 2.000, 1.500, 0.000, 0.921, 1.260, 0.800, 6.000, 6.000, 3.000, 150.000, 150.000
point.3 = 2, -20.738, 0, -5.28, 1600, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 9"

if you want to be able to change the wheels to move here you go, ignore everything other than the bolded like I have above (unless you know what you are doing)...skip to where you see 180.0 on that line and change it to be something like 65...below

point.0=1.000, 14.087, 0.000, -7.808, 1950.000, 0.000, 1.050, 65.0, 0.180, 6.142, 1.000, 6.000, 6.000, 0.000, 150.000, 150.000


not sure what happens if we changed the numbers before and after would do... I know some areas of the aircraft.cfg but this is deeper than my knowledge goes..but really it looks like all you have to do is change the 180.0, to 65.0, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING ELSE or it will change the way it flies dramaticlally!!




flying with only the keyboard in simulator

For nearly 30 years I've been using the keyboard and I have been enjoying it very much. I've tried the yoke and I still didn't get used to it!

I notice that it's not all that hard..I've been able to take off and land with all sorts of random aircraft big and small with no problem and am able to really get down to earth with the flying aspects on the keyboard...

Flying with the keyboard does mean that there are fewer things to break... yokes are about 2-3 pounds or more and there are parts to break that won't allow the machine to work or they are expensive than buying another one isn't worth it...

I seem to feel like I am the only one of maybe just 2-3 people that may still fly using the keyboard. Im not here to say anything about, or bash the yoke users I'm just here to say that if you want to be able to fly with the keyboard it's possible and I've been doing it for nearly 30 years!!

have a good day!1



Va locations as of 10/12/19

1.Buffalo:CYHY
 2.Westjet:CYVR
 3.CP Air:CYYZ
 4.Alaska:KSUN
 5.Froggie: PHNL  

another virtual pilot notam!

so it looks like if you want to use sqawkbox for fs2002/4 anymore they have (Vatsim inc) decided to not support it anymore  as well as FSinn and a few others.

So for now here are the server changes



!SERVERS:

CANADA:165.22.239.218:Toronto, Canada:CANADA:1:

GERMANY:167.71.49.142:Frankfurt, Germany:GERMANY:1:

AUSTRALIA:180.200.247.40:Australia:OCEANIA:1:

SINGAPORE:68.183.185.148:Singapore:SINGAPORE:1:

UK:167.71.136.59:London, UK:UK:1:

USA-EAST:134.209.67.219:New York, USA:USA-EAST:1:

USA-WEST:165.22.163.56:San Francisco, USA:USA-WEST:1:

Current VA Locations


  1. Alaska: KSFO
  2. American:(unsure because of the behindness of VA)
  3. Westjet:Toronto
  4. Buffalo:CYSM (on the new B206 Tour)
  5. CP Air:KRSW
  6. Froggie Air:KISP
  7. Ozark:KMSP
i think that's it for the time being

Twin Otter Best Liveries


Thes livery list is not suppoed to mean i like these over the others...just my fav so far..
  1. Winair
  2. Maldivian Air Taxi
  3. NOAA
  4. British Airways
  5. CC-138 RCAF
  6. Harbour Air
  7. Air Inuit
  8. Northwright Airlines
  9. Ken Borrek
  10. WestCoast Air

special notam for flight sim pilots

For those hoping to get a a little more real world weather showing up in flights, you might have used the FS9 and FSX default real world weather, since their inceptions onto the market until just a year or so ago. 

Since then users of both sims have been relegated to use some free and some paid options out there, most FSX users are using Activesky and  FS9 users are to use FSRealwx (or any others that work) for the mean time.

They both quite fix the problem of getting info downloaded only after 15mins (default on both sims) and relegate it to whatever you the end user wants. It could be however long you need to wait for weather info to download.

FSRealwx comes in two forms, one for free and one you pay (i think). FSrealwx Lite is a freeware weather program that will work for both sims (check them first as i have forgotten). FSRealwx Pro is a free for 30 days then pay up type of service and weather program...both work and look the same way just one has a limit of 30 days and then you have to pay for the product.Those have worked great in the years past and will continue to work for more years.

I find nowadays many people come into the flightsim community asking what weather program to use, there are only these listed below to use with the assorted sim and program. some of this is confusing as the payware one should be payware and would thus be easier to talk about.


FS9 has FSRealwx Lite
FSX has FSRealwxPro and AS16+ASCA

both of the fsrealwx can be found on their website https://www.fsrealwx.net/

if you want to use the AS16+ASCA go to https://hifisimtech.com/

Hoping that you can get to this, this is a great set of sites and programs to add a little more realism to your sim...

heres hoping that the notification of that these are the only ones you can use for both sim can be given to you...yes there are only two types of weather progras as listed above fsrealwx and as16...check them both out!!

100 Subscribers On YouTube!!!!




Just hit a new record of 100 subs on youtube recently..heres a shoutout to all those who have come and checked me out...

its been fun...

Well it's been about a year since I have tried to get my computers running  and then couldn't possibly use them again so they don...