Keith Smith

The process by which someone will join as a frequent flier has not yet been established. I suspect that once someone has made it into the program, they would not be charged at all, as long as they continue meet the monthly minimums. People don't like surprise charges on a credit card, so if they don't meet the minimums, then I suspect the right course of action is to temporarily disable the account, as opposed to charging them, and then generate an email asking them to either swap over to a normal account, or meet the hours within a certain amount of time. I'm not sure yet. I need to make sure the system doesn't take armies of people to administer on our end. If you fly on the network a few times a month to further your training, then you are using the system for your benefit and not necessarily benefiting PE all that much. If, however, you're flying a great deal, on a semi-predictable basis, then, up until a certain number of pilots, this is of value to the venture, hence the compromise in waiving the fee. If you're looking for precedent for services that charge you but still benefit from your presence, look no further than World of Warcraft, probably the most popular gaming subscription service around today. $15/mth. Without a critical user base, the service is not useful to people...yet, they don't offer it for free to anyone (as far as I know). I try very hard to put myself in the shoes of the consumers of our service and ask the question, "what would I want to be pay? What incentives would I consider to be interesting and relevant? How would I want to be treated?" Sure is. We've actually stepped up the staffing (informally) to include mon-fri during east coast business hours, too, at least with a single controller. Btw, Dozer, your avatar is pretty net. I had no idea that they ever made an analogue DME gauge.

Thanks for feedback. I completely understand your point about alienation. I'd assumed most of the interest in this would be from domestic pilots, but if there is an international community that would be interested in flying, then PE should put together a "getting used to US airspace/procedures" primer to help people such as yourself get started. Thankfully, all of the required charts and plates are available online for free, which makes it very easy to navigate and conduct flight planning. Regarding timezone, I assume you're not from from GMT. The operating hours for ATC will likely be 1500z-0600z. I have to imagine that mid afternoon until early morning will be well-suited to most people in Europe/Africa. So, with the time sorted out and the available procedures/tutorials, I'm hoping it will be a good fit for you to fly in our coverage area. You could certainly fly in your local area if you wanted, too.

Hi guys, I'd like some feedback on the following idea. The network provides the best experience for a given pilot when the radio is relatively busy with other live traffic. The drone traffic does a great job of providing something to see during the flight, and the occasional traffic call from ATC, but they don't actually talk on the radio. I'm fairly sure that pilots enjoy the system quite a bit more when they know that other pilots are around. I also understand that while real world pilots are generally quite happy to part with a modest monthly fee for a service like this (it can truly save them money on real world flight training, and helps them to stay sharp), the same is NOT true for most sim enthusiasts. It could never be argued that PilotEdge SAVES money for a sim enthusiast. Hence, as good as the service might be, they are likely to be a highly INTERESTED, but PRICE RESISTANT audience. That is, they might love what we offer, but not be willing to pay for it. To that end, I'm considering the concept of a 'frequent flier' program, mainly aimed at the sim enthusiasts. Their subscription will be waived for a given month if they are able to participate at a certain level during that month. It will likely be an hourly minimum, with certain parameters around the flight (must be conducted out of a towered airport, and must maintain communication with ATC throughout the flight). This would be a win-win for PE as it would provide a base level of real-time traffic that also has a radio presence, as well as the simple fact that pilots generally like to know that they are not alone in the system. If we can have a certain number of these people flying on a relatively continuous basis, it will help the 'snowball' effect that we need for this venture to be successful on the retail side in the long term. Traffic brings more traffic....but where do you get those first few planes to start the ball rolling? This program might be the answer. Thoughts?

The best way to learn to work with ATC is to work through a training program specifically designed to learn how to fly 'in the system'. Using a synthetic ATC system, even if it's highly improved, isn't really going to get you there. I would suggest checking out the ZLA Pilot Cert program on VATSIM, or the Training Center over at PilotEdge. The material is the same in both programs. That's a series of 3 VFR flights and 11 IFR flights (you'll see the last two IFR flights after you complete the 9th one) which will step you through the basics, complete with video tutorials, written transcripts, the required charts, etc.

Thanks. I suspect a number of people are in your boat. That's why I thought it would be helpful to provide some information that would help someone in your situation to conduct a simple flight on the network, armed with the information of what to do and say at each step of the way. Assuming you're already with the basics of operating the airplane and basic navigation, the best way to dip your toe in the water would be to start with the PilotEdge Training Center. This is a series of 3 VFR flights and 11 IFR flights which step you through a number of common scenarios. Each flight has written material, sample ATC transcripts, and even an introductory video to help you get through the flight. If you're in South Africa, the timezone will be certainly be an issue for our formal beta hours, however, we have been going a lot of staffing outside of those hours, too (on an informal basis). After we fully launch, this won't be a problem as we'll have ATC coverage 15x7. For now, though, if you try flying Mon-Fri between 10am-6pm EDT (GMT-4), you'll likely have coverage during your flight. If you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to ask. I strongly suspect what whatever you're wondering will likely be on the minds of other pilots, too.

I posted a tutorial on how to conduct a flight from a non-towered field in to a towered field in THIS THREAD. PilotEdge is still in beta mode with guaranteed ATC on Wed and Sun evenings (pacific time), with adhoc staffing outside of those hours (we tend to be online mon-fri during east coast business hours (GMT-5)). If any pilots have been considering flying on the network but are unsure about basic communications and ATC procedures, that tutorial will hopefully provide a simple introduction to what is a very simple VFR flight, about 25 minutes in length. As a reminder, the network itself is still available 24/7, and the radios work 24/7, anywhere in the world. That means that if you and a buddy want to try it out and fly at your local airport, you will be able to see and hear each other on the radio (if you're nearby and on the same frequency). The voice system is NOT dependent on the presence of an air traffic controller. As it happens, tomorrow's beta night involves F70 and PSP as focus flights (along with two other fields), so it would be a great time to try the tutorial flight to get your feet wet!

For those who are interested in online flying, here is a tutorial of how to conduct a simple VFR flight from a non-towered field in southern California called French Valley (airport code is F70), to a towered airport, Palm Springs (airport code is KPSP). This flight will be conducted on the PilotEdge network. Here is a quick tutorial of how to conduct this flight on the network, including what to say, and how to navigate each step of the way. Let's use a 172, Piper Archer, or any other 110-120kt airplane. This will be about a 25 minute flight. Here's a map of the airports, and the planned route. Navigating the route: Let's disregard the GPS for this flight. Set your sim to good weather...we're going to navigate by looking out the window to build some confidence in our map reading skills. Like any VFR cross-country exercise, our trip is split into several legs: 1) F70 to NE corner of Diamond Valley Lake, HDG 025, distance 10nm, speed 90kts in the climb to 5500ft. Time: 7 mins 2) Diamond Valley Lake to Banning Airport, HDG 020, distance 15nm, speed 120kts in cruise, about 7 1/2 minutes. 3) Banning Airport to a point abeam the highpoint of the mountains to the south, HDG 080, distance 10nm, time should be 5 minutes. It's also the point where the valley opens up. 4) East of Banning to Palm Springs, HDG 110, distance 11nm, about 5 1/2 mins. Expect to enter a RIGHT DOWNWIND for RWY 31L or 31R, which should give you ample time for the descent. This means you'll be on the EAST side of the airport, making RIGHT turns in the pattern to land. Communicating on the route: - French Valley is a non-towered airport, with a published CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency) of 122.80. Tune your COM1 radio to 122.80 and make your way to the runway that you deem to be active (rwy 36 or rwy 18), based on the winds. - once you reach the runway, scan the area for traffic, ensure the runway is clear, then announce the following, "French Valley Traffic, Skyhawk (or other aircraft type) taking off [runway number], straight out departure, French Valley." (This assumes you're departing rwy 36). Note the use of "French Valley traffic" at the start, then the repeating of the airport name (sans 'traffic') at the END of the transmission. This is INTENTIONAL and is standard for non-towered airport ops. - climb out to 5500ft on course, and on speed, and start looking for that lake! When you have a moment, call March Approach on 133.50 (published on the chart in the white box just west of the lake), "March Approach, Skyhawk One Two Three Alpha Bravo, 10 southeast of Homeland VOR, request flight following to Palm Springs." March Approach will respond with a transponder assignment (your 'squawk' code), will provide you with the local altimeter setting, and ask you to verify your altitude, as well as your planned cruise altitude (if you're still climbing). Set your transponder as instructed and then enjoy the ride. - You will be handed from March Approach to a various Socal Approach frequencies. Listen for any transmissions involving your callsign. You'll either be getting traffic alerts, or frequency changes to other controllers. - Eventually, the approach controller will ask you to report Palm Springs in sight. Let him know when you see it, then you'll be handed off to the tower, 119.70. Follow the pattern entry instruction, most likely to be "enter right downwind runway 31R" (or 31L), and then eventually "cleared to land." - exit the runway and follow the instruction to either taxi to the ramp, or to swap to the ground control frequency. If the controller says, "say parking," that means he'd like to know where you plan to park. A reasonable response would be "GA parking on the west side" or "GA parking on the east side." I hope this helps, and that some of you will consider giving this a try if you haven't flown on the network already. This is a very gentle introduction to flying on the network. You'll be starting out at your own pace from a non-towered field, so the communications will be very light to start out with. I highly recommend doing this VFR and not IFR. The navigation requirements are considerably simpler and more flexible. Take a break from point to point flying with the GPS and try some good old pilotage (looking out the window to correlate what's on the map with what you see outside!). Also, don't hesitate to swap to an external view to get a better look outside. In a real plane, you can look around much easier than you can in the sim...so do whatever you need to do to get a visual on where you are in relation to nearby landmarks. Lastly, use the headings and timings in the nav section to cross check with your pilotage skills. If you fly the speeds and headings, you should cross over the desired landmarks pretty much right on time! Enjoy! Note: The communications procedures were specific to PilotEdge but could also be adapted to work on VATSIM. In that environment, you would use 122.80 for the non-towered comms (regardless of the published freq for the airport) and you would use TEXT to announce your intentions at the non-towered field. Also, you would not use the published frequencies to call the approach controller for flight following. Additionally, it's highly unlikely the Palm Springs tower and ground will be staffed, so you will need to review the controller list to work out who to call for flight following.

Simbabeat, I'm in the same boat as you, recently discovered this site, but certainly not new to X-Plane. You'll enjoy it here...good people.

I use DXTORY, a tool from Japan that specifically records OpenGL apps, dumping the images directly out of the buffer (apparently). It has the ability to capture audio from multiple sound devices, with each channel being captured as a separate audio track in the resulting video file. It also captures in RAW format, using tons of space, but excellent visual quality. If you have drives that can keep up, it does a good job and uses comparatively little CPU in the process. Here's a video that shows the video quality, and has two separate audio tracks:

Unbelievable. The community has needed a jet of this caliber for many years now. Congratulations to the team for getting this out there, I wish you many, many, many sales

Sun, Apr 17 marks the first of many Events to be held on the PE network. X-US Airways, a new X-Plane based VA, is commemorating the opening of their Las Vegas hub with a PE fly-in from Vegas to LAX. The event will start at 6pm PDT (9pm EDT), with full staffing for at least 3 hours. Jets and turboprops are encouraged to fly LAS to LAX (routes are posted on the PE home page, http://www.pilotedge.net). Pistons are encouraged to fly Palm Springs (PSP) to either SMO, HHR, or LAX. This should generate a nice cluster of arrivals in and around the LAX corridor. It's a relatively short hop, so pilots can feel free to continue flying after the event, too! We're hoping that the combination of jet, turboprop, and piston routes will mean that there'll be something for everyone. This should be a lot of fun, and with luck, will be a great test of our procedures and staffing configuration(s) to see how we handle a step up from the traffic we've been seeing in the betas so far. If LAS or PSP don't float your boat as departure airports, feel free to simply come online and enjoy the network, fly some ratings from the new PE Training Center, shoot approaches, pattern work, or whatever works for you around Southern California. If you can't make it until later, that's fine, too...a steady stream would be almost as good as a big surge. By way of an update, many exciting things are happening internally at PilotEdge. Commercial prospects are popping up at a rapid rate (including some very big names), work has started on the production-grade web site, and progress is finally being made on the MSFS client, which is, of course, the key to large-scale retail adoption. Work is also progressing on the Facility Engineering & QA side. We're also seeing a sharp uptick in interest from real world controllers (active duty, and retired).

Your message (a reasonable one, I might add) seems to address Austin directly. There's an underlying assumption, then, that Austin reads this forum. I don't see any definitive evidence to support such an assumption. If you want him to see your message, email him. I agree that the lull in MSFS development represented a huge opportunity to capture a portion of the msfs market, hungry for new development. All it would take is: - an investment in some terminal scenery and landmarks for the major fields around the world (lots of work, but of finite complexity, and can be farmed out to a massive number of scenery developers). - development of some high quality stock aircraft with 3d cockpits and a working FMS. An extraordinary number of MSFS users would come running over to the new platform if these were in place. The question would be, will Austin make more money in this model, taking into account the development cost of those two features? IPhone/Android sales are not a 'niche' market. I've been working with a guy that runs a software company that, up until recently, was focused on console development...but is now shifting to the mobile platforms. Mobile is seeing MASSIVE adoption rates, and opening up an entirely new market for game developers, well outside the demographic of the typical 'gamer' market.

Quick update on the venture, we are getting closer to the full launch, but there's a couple more milestones to go. In the mean time, we are proceeding with the beta program, 2 nights a week (rather than 3). Wed is Socal night, while Sun night sees Norcal getting its turn. (Southern and Northern California). We also launched the PilotEdge Training Center, which contains the PE version of ZLA's Pilot Certification system from VATSIM. It's now possible to fly on either network and receive credit for the ratings.

Chris Serio is doing the X-Plane 10 ATC implementation. He holds a commercial pilot certificate, but is not an Air Traffic Controller. The built-in ATC in XP10 appears to hold MUCH promise. I've heard that it might be missing a few things on the day 1 release, but it can be upgraded as time goes on without a complete rewrite. Anything that gets ppl interested in learning the right procedures can only be a good thing. I can't wait to see it in action!

We're including norcal (SFO/OAK/SJC/RNO/MRY) in the staffing for the beta tonight. The web site will say 'norcal is online' and 'socal is online' for the first time today. We still have some work to do to polish our procedures for norcal, but we think that people will appreciate the change of scenery for tonight. The focus flight is LAX-SFO for turbojets, SBA-MRY for turboprops, and SBP-MRY for pistons, with staffing from 5pm-9pm for free flight. The focus flight itself starts at 7pm. If anyone has been holding back, waiting a wider area of ATC coverage to allow for the famous socal-norcal runs or norcal-socal, this would be a great night to give it a try.

Hmmm, is any of this true? http://www.proflightsimulator.com/fg-help.htm

Silly me, I should've qualified this and said that most ad tracking services will ignore subsequent clicks from the same IP/browser if they're in quick succession. What I should've said, perhaps, is that you can make it a daily ritual, a couple of times to day, to find their ads and click on them

Here's a suggestion for ways to get back at that company. Click on every one of their ads that you can find. This costs them money. Once you're on their site, click through a good number of their pages, slowly. This will pollute their metrics and lead them to believe that their ads are bringing some qualified eyeballs to the site.

Following 3 drones on PilotEdge along a Military Training Route (VR-1257) in Southern California. Flying the stock F-4 Phantom.

approx 240,000 square miles, and it costs nothing at the moment. I don't mean to appear defensive, but I am obliged to correct gross inaccuracies if I see them. Also, that is the ATC coverage area. If you want to fly outside of the coverage area, you still get full voice unicom, range limited by altitude of sender/receiver, anywhere in the world.

Wow, Indi. I'm flattered. Even as PE founder, though, I would still say that other options DO exist PE is not for everyone (especially once it becomes payware, which it will). The other thread is a reasonable list. Each network has pros and cons. For simply flying around in a high fidelity environment, netflight does a good job. PE is like netflight, with ATC, voice unicom, and Ultimate Traffic built-in.

The CSL format is the same as VATSIM, which is obj v7. We're going to use v8 in the future to support animations, and then make that code available to the X-IVAP code base so that it can be used on VATSIM/IVAO/Xflightserver, too. I completely agree with your assessment of the event. It was not well-organized or structured. The thinking was that people would show up, fly through the Canyon, and then between the drones that pass through every 5 minutes (overtaking just about everyone), in concert with the organic traffic, everyone would get to see _something_. Beyond that, if people organized into specific groups, then that would be at their discretion. What I didn't provide, however, was a suggested mechanism for people to use to DO that organizing, such as: 1. suggesting that pilots post their intentions on the Fly with Me forum on the site ahead of time to form a group, or 2. suggesting that pilots meet at GCN at 7pm PST and tune to a discrete frequency to meet up with people and come up with a plan (number of planes to depart at a time, who would lead, type of airplane, speeds, etc), THEN contact ground for taxi as a formation flight. That said, we did have a large number of pilots on the ramp at GCN at the scheduled start time of 7pm PST (although I saw that others left prior to that). When we were done having fun with the high speed military jets, we restarted at GCN and all used exactly the same airplane (the stock PA-46 Malibu) and then all flew together into the canyon again. That was a great experience, and will be one that's easy to recreate, and easy to follow. I will definitely use your feedback, as well as my own observations, to make it more structured and new-user-friendly the next time around. I hope you'll give the network another shot on one of the beta nights (wed/fri/sun) at 7pm pst. That format is well-understood, pilots show up at the focus airport and pick up an IFR clnc (or depart VFR) from one airport to another. The combination of live traffic and drones makes for an interesting experience, as does the radio chatter, of course.

The CSL you posted appears to use a V8 OBJ, which is not supported yet. How was your flight last night?

Thus far, the 'focus flights' (held 3 times each week) have been relatively serious and traditional. Tomorrow, however, we're going to let loose and enjoy the network's ability to function as a fun, interactive environment for pilots. We're hosting a group flight through the Grand Canyon, along the river. This is a flight which many pilots have probably done many times by themselves. It's something else, though, to do it with: - an online environment that shows other pilots - high speed updates (5 times/sec) from other traffic - a working radio - AND...pre-recorded traffic that everyone sees, in the form of 4 F/A-18's that come thundering through at 600kts just above the water....every 5 minutes. If anyone has been thinking of giving this network a try, but perceived it as being a little too serious for them, and wasn't wild about ATC interaction, this would be the time to try it out. We're starting out at KGCN (a towered airport, but all you need to do is tune the ground frequency (121.90), call for taxi to the active, call tower when holding short (119.00), and then once you leave the airspace, they cut you loose. Full details with route maps, suggestions for traffic avoidance, etc, are all HERE.

Thanks, I'm glad that you like what we're up to. We're just scratching the surface of what's possible with the platform right now, but even in these early days, the difference between flying/controlling here compared to other networks is like night and day....and I LIKE those other networks! To your specific question, as you may know, r/w aircraft generally have separate switches to allow you to HEAR com1 and/or com2, and other switches to TRANSMIT on com1 or com2. These functions operate independently. X-Plane's stock instrumentation, though, only has a single, generic com1/com2 selector. What that selector should DO is entirely up to the plugin developer when it comes to how it affects radio transmission/reception. As things stand today, we only support the operation of the com1 radio, period. com2 can be used to pick up X-Plane's internal ATIS (we don't override that), but it's not possible to hear PilotEdge ATC transmissions on com2 or make any transmissions on com2. This will change in the future. Given X-Plane's current instrumentation limitation, we will likely treat the com1/2 selector as a TRANSMIT selector, and have com1/2 reception 'always on'. Users with a PFC-branded audio panel will be treated to a fully functioning audio panel, in the future. This mostly applies to commercial users, though. Incidentally, many of the older radios don't have a standby/staging frequency. In fact, if you watch one of the on YT and look carefully at the panel that I'm using, you'll notice there's no stdby freqs. It's not too hard to work with, you simply can't set up in advance, that's all.Edit: my mistake, you can effectively use the com2 radio as a staging area for com1 with the current setup, that is true.