I have been monitoring the VATSIM network for months now just to realize that there is either a shortage of controllers or there are no controllers online through many or almost all parts of the day in India. Similarly, almost all airports have no ATIS information available as well.
i am a VATSIM flyer as well and it generally gets very boring to login and fly in a continuously uncontrolled VATSIM Airspace in my homeland. i usually have to first hunt for controlled airspaces before filing a flight plan as i am every time very sure even before logging in that my homeland airspace will be uncontrolled as usual due to no controller being online. there is practically no controller online throughout the day let it be morning afternoon evening night or even midnight and this makes me loose interest in filing a flight plan as i would always love taking off or landing in one of my homeland airports in a controlled state.
this is the reason i am asking this community to guide me to the people or VATSIM community involved in controlling the Asia region or specifically India region so that i can eventually at least fill up one position and do my best to keep it manned during the usual flying hours i have observed other flyers online on VATSIM network taking off and landing in Indian Airspace.
being an aviation journalist, I understand the basics as well as some advanced concepts as we are in constant touch with many real life controllers when they are off duty and get to learn a lot about their job and concepts while getting information for our articles which i feel is surely going to help me grasp things even more quickly as compared to someone who has practically no knowledge about the concepts involved and has just gotten into the network recently (PS: no harm or harsh speech meant to any new member of the community)
hope the community will guide me to the concerned individuals and thank you in advanced for all the suggestions
My belief is that this is part of a wider conversation that also involves the CTAF debate. Whilst certain parts of the network strive for 100% realism, others suffer by this standard. The ATC standards expected across the network are always said to be needed and defendable, however it hurts numbers and coverage. The same is now being pushed onto pilots with unrealistic procedures. It is the ying and yang. Dragging the standards to total realism is unrealistic in a hobby in my opinion. If other areas of the world of VATSIM could lower the realism expected then I am sure we would see increased participation.
my take on this is that people love realism and want to get the feel of actually flying an aircraft. not their fault. but what i suggest it that we need to also know that there are pilots who are inexperienced or new and forcing these procedures would lead someone to quit the VATSIM flying.
we all are hobbyists and need to understand that a hobby is sometimes to relax rather than increase pressure on oneself.
i agree with your point here but also support those who want to go as close as 100% realism as they would be loving it and would like to experience the realism
There is a pretty good solution for this though: giving new controllers who are still waiting for the in-depth training great freedom in staffing all the smaller, uncomplicated airfields with traffic levels that don’t require a great deal of skill on part of the controller. And for the larger, more complex, and/or high traffic airports, you can then require controllers to go through more in-depth training.
That way, there will be plenty of easy airports with regular staffing that newer pilots and controllers can get their first experiences at without any significant of critical mistakes or those mistakes having a negative impact on others while people who enjoy realism, complex procedures, bustling frequencies, etc. can fly at the more complicated airports.
In fact, you could see this exact concept working beautifully in Germany right up until March when GCAP became effective and forced a bunch of changes that made it impossible to keep the newer controllers confined to these easier airports which resulted in an immense drop in coverage as the four or five more complex airports (which all had very good staffing levels before that already) that they are now allowed to staff in addition to the 20 or so easy ones are of course much more interesting to them (because who would want to control a position that gets maybe 4 or 5 movements per hour during the evening prime time when they could also control positions that get 10 to 15 or even more movements in the same time, which has the unfortunate side effect (though nothing new and present throughout all controller ratings) that controllers rather decide to not staff any position at all than to staff a position they would deem boring or uninteresting) and of course the training requirements for new controllers also rose significantly as a result of this development.
But, and this is always important to keep in mind, most vACCs are very small. I just looked through the rosters of the subdivisions within the VATEUD division and almost all have fewer than 100 controllers with many even having less than 50. There are only three exceptions out of the 24 total subdivisions: Scandinavia (which covers a bunch of countries that are all treated separately, so each of these countries likely has less than 50 controllers regardless), Italy with a bit more than 200, and Germany with just shy of 650. This means that in many cases it’s less a question of how realistic controller training is (in fact, realism tends to be lower in smaller vACCs whereas larger vACCs are more likely to have the manpower and resources to figure out how things work exactly IRL, teach these procedures to their controllers, develop software to help controllers quickly look up information, etc.) but rather a question of how many people are actually interested in and actively controlling there (and there are a bunch of factors that play into it, of course, such as traffic levels and, for the specific case of India probably also quite relevant, the significantly higher popularity of the Europe and America regions compared to the Asia region).
FANTASTIC!! You managed to bring a discussion on a trial CTAF performed in the USA to be of relevance to atc in India. I had’nt seen that comming.
There may be other reasons as to why the number of VATSIM members in certain parts of the World are small - and I doubt realism issues matters a lot in this regard.
this actually seems to be a very good solution. just that there are hardly any to none controllers in India online even to handle major airports. that being said, i know many VATSIM pilots in India who choose flying in the UK US or EU airspace since those are controlled airports with controllers online giving them a feel of realism. if only India vACC had controllers online, these pilots would prefer flying in India with not exact same realism but at least realism up to 80% of the ones controlled in EU US or UK.
one possible reason for VATSIM members in certain parts of the world are less is because the VATSIM users in these regions usually get bored due to less or no controllers being online and the flight seems just like we are flying offline.
my suggestion would be that the community takes up this issue and allow people actually willing to be a controller in the region and training them so that at least new controllers can take charge of the airports which are almost all the time unmanned.
also, realism issues matter as new flyers usually don’t go to controlled airspace as they are often scared of doing mistakes and in smaller unmanned airports, there are no controllers online so these new fliers do not actually get to talk to ATC to learn. these new fliers usually have to bite the bullet and go the the huge airports and commit some mistakes to learn and often make a mockery of themselves with a number of veteran flyers on the frequency. though the veterans often help the new pilots, sometimes the new flyers find making mistakes guilty and then never log on the airports with a huge traffic.
by all means, i am not asking to reduce the level of realism as people love it. but, if smaller airfields or airports are manned, new fliers can also learn and make mistakes which will teach them before entering the bigger airports.
