Pilots not communicating at all is a sad fact of life. Yesterday I had 3 pilots flying as a group from EKYT to ENTO pushing back, taxiing and taking of without talking to me sitting as Enroute controller in Denmark. While a Supervisor initially got them off the network, they were soon back.
Why fly online, if you do not want to talk to anyone?
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There is now a feedback form yāall can fill out: https://forms.gle/hzJQ4F5JBFa7FQ798
The announcement post on Discord reads:
Dear VATSIM Members,
Since March 1st, 2024, VATUSA has been trialing the use of real-world Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) .
As we near the end of this trial, we need your feedback to help us evaluate its effectiveness.
Why Your Feedback Matters:
ā¢ Evaluate the transition from UNICOM to CTAF
ā¢ Assess the clarity and accessibility of provided information
ā¢ Understand any communication issues or areas for improvement
Please take a moment to complete our feedback form : https://forms.gle/hzJQ4F5JBFa7FQ798
Your input is crucial for enhancing the realism and safety of our virtual skies.
Thank you for your support!
No idea why this hasnāt been posted on the forums yet.
Targeted feedback.
Targeted to whom?
my only problem with VATSIM and the use of Unicom, the guard frequency, and CTAF frequencies is no one uses them as intended. I cant tell you how many times in the last week or two ive been on final approach and some yutz pulls in front of me clearly trying to race me to the ground, or someone pulls out onto an active landing runway and goes to take off without stating intentions, and on and on and onā¦
whats the point of any of this if no one is using it; causing problems for everyone else that is using it?
too many pilots on here have the mindset of āno controller, no rulesā and it honestly pisses me off.
honestly i dont understand why this is hard for people to figure out. I get that it isnt entirely realistic all of the time, but what its intended use is for, does a really good job.
Yep. The problem, as I see it, is that there are members of Vatsim who really, really treat it as a game. This perspective is enabled particularly when there is no ATC, which, as you said, prompts the yahoos to adopt the āno rulesā approach.
This view of life in Vatsim is enhanced by the recent products form Microsoft, who are solidly in the game market. I think their recent products are spectacularly good, but they come with a game mentality which is diammetrically opposite to what the Board of Governors want.
People misusing the features available will always exist, due to ignorance, apathy, indifference or pathology. Vatsim tries to fix the first of these, but the others are much harder to fix. Making the entry requirements more rigorous will help, and that approach is already in progress.
The problem, of course, is people. They join Vatsim trundling their own particular set of baggage and then have to perform within an enviroment which demands concentration, dedication, willingness to learn, and a desire to be accepted within the community - to be a good citizen.
Thatās too hard for some (many?) of them, and supervisors must deal with that. But it seems to me that the stick-wielding is more effective than the carrot-dangling which would be preferred by any educationist.
The fear is that we are being swamped by that group for whom the work required to fully enjoy Vatsim is just too much. It is, after all, only a game, right?
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hit the nail on the head.
While I agree with most of what you said, I think we also need to consider how much we are asking of the people wishing to participate in the network. As has been said in this thread repeatedly, CTAF changes the system from a very simple āno ATC = 122.8ā to something much more complex which for the majority of users doesnāt even really increase realism.
On top of that, we need to ask ourselves if enough is being done to make sure that everyone (or at least almost everyone) knows about the system and understands how it works. Although I think that there are a bunch of issues with how VATSIM communicates with its community as well as within itself, in most cases, changes donāt result in essentially everyone changing their behavior - but with this CTAF trial, for the system to work, everybody needs to know about it. I have said it before, but the little yellow box on myVATSIM will likely be overlooked by most as people and announcement via this forum or a Discord server will certainly not reach everyone (though, for that matter, I think the idea of changing the MotD when logging in is probably also not going to reach that many people because they simply donāt pay attention to it).
I imagine there are many people that fly only every now and then, but even people more regularly flying and/or controlling on the network are likely only paying little to no attention to the various developments on the network. Many people are also not very regularly or often flying in the US or one of the other new additional trial countries, so those people may simply revert to 122.8 out of habit, even if they technically know about the trial. It also seems that there may be some confusion among pilots on how to act - not only how to find the correct frequency and when to use it, but also whether itās mandatory to use; I just recently read in a thread elsewhere where some users felt that it being labeled as a trial meant they were allowed to use the CTAF frequency if they wanted but could also continue using 122.8.
AutoATC should be used to send reminders if there is no ATC.
- Departure airport CTAF when connecting
- Change to 122.8 above 10,000 ft
- Destination airport CTAF about 50nm out
While I think thatās generally not a bad idea to get people using CTAF, it is my understanding that AUTO_ATC is tied to vNAS/CRC and thus canāt be used to solve the problem outside of the US, no? If so, it couldnāt really solve the underlying problem.
And frankly, if such a level of handholding is required to make the system work, we really need to ask ourselves if the current trial shouldnāt be declared a failure and shelve the idea for a bit until someone comes up with a better idea.
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yes i agree and its not like there isnt BIG HUGE ANNOUNCEMENTS with instructions when you log in, prefile, etc. Saying that is too much for people to remember is rewarding laziness imo
you make it sound like there isnt a massive annoucement about it on the flight plan filing screen, and all over the VATSIM webpage. Itās really not that hard to find or understand.
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Well, imagine the average user who isnāt yet aware of the trial and thus obviously doesnāt know about that banner on myVATSIM. How do they use myVATSIM and what do they focus on while using it?
Aside from filing the flight plan (and maybe events, though there are many other and arguably better ways for pilots to find out about upcoming events that donāt require them to go to myVATSIM specifically), there isnāt really any reason to visit the site. And in that case most people will have SimBrief prepare a flight plan, press prefile, get forwarded to the myVATSIM FPL filing page, immediately scroll down to the āFile Planā button, wait until the green āYour flight plan has been successfully filedā notification comes up, and close the site again. Thereās going to be maybe a second of that banner being visible on their screen and the user is going to be focused on something completely different (scrolling down and clicking āFile Planā) during even that short time. Certainly also doesnāt help that a subdued yellow color that blends in nicely with the rest of the page and does anything but jump into the userās eye has been chosen for the banner.
So yes, I would most certainly argue that that information is hard to find if you donāt already know about it. Understanding it is a different topic - of the two, itās probably the much easier one, but as I said above, itās certainly significantly more complex than the previous āno ATC = 122.8ā rule (and seeing how many pilots struggle with very basic stuff that is technically required knowledge/skill as per the CoC or similar, I wouldnāt be surprised if this significantly more complex system was at the very least confusing for a good chunk of the user base).
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if you are clicking past these that is on you. You can get me any what if you want. You have to choose not to read an announcement this obvious
if you fly in real life do you skip the NOTAMs or do you read them, honest question?
and again youre speaking to laziness more than anything. Youre saying the average user is too lazy and doesnt care about the etiquette VATSIM is striving for, which to my point is - why are they here?
It has nothing to do with laziness, care for etiquette, or what have you - itās a simple matter of how humans operate and all I have pointed out was that the way VATSIM has chosen to communicate this trial with its community is most likely very ineffective, particularly at reaching the part of the community that is not already very actively engaging with the network outside of just flying and/or controlling.
If we want people to behave a certain way, itās up to us to make sure they know about it, understand the reasons, and are able to achieve the desired behavior and unfortunately - most of the time and in all aspects of life - that requires much more than putting up a little note somewhere. Everything else would require people to be able to read minds, which they are not.
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Iāll be honest, I HAVE been choosing not to read those announcements. Iām on that page literally just to press the āfile nowā button and close it, just as previously described. Iāve peripherally noticed there are headers up there but I never actually read them, because, wellā¦ Iām not there to read about the network, Iām just filing a flight plan. And yes, I do fly in real life and no, those are not Notams 
.
I follow all rules on the network (to include ctaf usage) and I agree with many points made about the degradation of behavior on the network. I mention this as an example of how the other poster is correct: many people arenāt going to read banners on top of that webpage. I think the message on vpilot is good, I think an autoATC reminder would be better, and a literal popup that has to be acknowledged before filing might help as wellā¦ But ultimately, with Vatsim in its current state, thereās going to be a lot of failed uptake on this
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ultimately its just a nag. Im sure no one is doing it with bad intentions.
This morning I was taking off behind 2 other people, lined up and ready to go, and got a call that someone was coming in on our runway on final approach.
Total disregard for the weather, not listening to the advisory channel or that people were on 16R instead of 36L and so onā¦
VATSIM has a lot of problems with casual users, i guess CTAF is ultimately not the worst of them.