Vatsim may not be the most accurate in terms of teaching you what to say, but it will get you comfortable saying it live.
I've had some truly amazing experiences, including the night before my first discovery flight at KPAO when KPAO was miraculously towered in vatsim (it almost never is compared to the major airports in the Bay).
I logged in and started flying the pattern with a very friendly controller. Somehow we ended up with a full pattern which I've never seen at a GA field in the sim.
Eventually we all started chatting, and turns out the controller used to fly out of KPAO IRL, and another local pilot was in the pattern. I got a bunch of great tips on sight maps for the pattern there, airport procedures and best practices, etc.
It sounds cheesy but it was one of those magical Internet moments of connection with other people that sticks with you forever.
Nailed everything during my discovery flight the next day.
It's such a welcoming community. When I first started exploring, I was on a laptop that couldn't run FS so ventured into the ATC side as the software can run on essentially anything. I joined a session that had an active ATC and he ATC on-call kept walking me through everything that was happening during low moments.
During my first flight I added a comment to the flight plan that I was new and the ATC walked me through how to startup the plane when running into some issues with the guide as they had been an instructor on the exact plane in a real world setting.
If you are curious about it, just dig right in and someone will help you along the way.
> Vatsim may not be the most accurate in terms of teaching you what to say, but it will get you comfortable saying it live.
What are some of the inaccuracies? I enjoy flight sims, but I'm not sure I want to actually get a license. My understanding was that it tried to use accurate communication, so I'm curious about the differences!
> I enjoy flight sims, but I'm not sure I want to actually get a license.
This was me in late 2021 / early 2022.
I urge you to get a discovery flight! I did, and now I'm almost finished with my instrument rating. One of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. I love flying so much - more than I ever could have imagined.
Your wallet won't like it though.
If you use reddit I'd recommend lurking r/flying. Great community of pilots ranging from students to hobby pilots to 747 captains.
In my (limited) experience, the inaccuracies are just due to amateur pilots/ATC not getting phraseology spot on and being more forgiving than the real world. Obviously, VATSIM doesn't have the users to populate the server with true to life Traffic and ATC at all locations. This lets you make your callouts slower than what you would see in real life.
ATC in real life can be surprisingly forgiving, too, depending on a lot of things (weather, their workload, if there's a lot of local flight training, and so on). There are a lot of things they will of course insist on though, like reading back hold short instructions and assigned runways. If you call up for routine VFR flight following on a not-busy day and accidentally forget some bit of info like your altitude, they'll just ask for it no big deal.
Yeah I think a lot of people forget that students talk on the radio on their first flight. Controllers in real life are used to people talking too casually and not knowing the right phrases. You can also say "student pilot" after saying your first line if you want them to speak slower
I'm planning to staff PAO/SQL when I get my tower rating (hopefully) soon as I also fly out of them IRL. Hopefully can get a full pattern going again! Say hi if you see me on
Curious do you remember the tips for the sight maps for the pattern/best practices? They sound cool to share for pilots unfamiliar with the field
At KPAO the main thing to know is 1) on departure turn 10 degrees right after clearing runway for noise, and 2) they will often extend the pattern for more space when it gets busy. On the departure/upwind leg, they may extend you to the train bridge or the auto bridge (Dumbarton bridge) before you turn crosswind. On your downwind leg, they may extend you to the amphitheatre, which is the white tent looking thing near Google. This actually runs into KNUQ (Moffet) airspace but the controllers coordinate this so it's fine. And don't extend unless they tell you!
For KSQL, new pilots mostly get tripped upon the departure procedures. You can fly the Hillsdale departure, Oracle departure, Coyote Hills departure, or Woodside departure. KSQL is a short hop from KSFO and under their jet approach, so the procedures are intended to create more predictable incoming/outgoing traffic. Annoyingly, these departures are not charted and instead published as part of the "voluntary noise abatement procedures" by the airport. You can read them here (PDF) https://www.smcgov.org/media/57331
Both are great little GA airports. I learned to fly with West Valley Flying Club and wholeheartedly recommend them. Friendly pilots and a supportive community. If you have questions, just pop into their office and you're likely to find someone you can ask (and get stuck talking about airplanes for an hour :)).
For PAO specifically, also helpful to know where KGO (trio of radio antennas alongside bridges), the Dish / Stanford, Sunken Ship (what it sounds like), the Birdhouse (round structure between Amphitheater and PAO), Amphitheater (as well explained in top comment), 101, and train/auto bridges which often get used as visual landmarks.
For SQL, I can’t really remember too many landmarks that get used often other than Cement Plant (cement plant on the bay slightly past south side of the field) and AT&T (big grey building).
Vatsim is one of those communities that reminds me a lot of the early Internet. You have this smallish community of hobbyists that are all volunteering differing amounts of time and skills to come together over a shared goal that seems impossible when you write it out as a sentence.
> What if you could fly flight simulators with real ATC, talking to real humans?
It's a super friendly place and the barrier to entry for learning these types of skills is typically extremely high in real life. After COVID grounded me during my pilot's training I moved to VR and a virtual cockpit with Vatsim. Little did I realize I could "fly" at home at such a level of fidelity with other people. I ended up realizing I was getting my license only because I was interested in learning the systems. I could do that safely (I have kids, and was a bit worried) at home. It's not the same, but it's close.
Flipped the other way around, I researched what aircraft my local flight school had and started using sims with VATSIM before pursuing my PPL. My CFI was impressed with my radio acumen when I started and I imagine it saved me a good deal of money in some regard (less training needing to be spent there).
Nothing replaces getting in the air, but using a sim certainly can make those (expensive) hours up in the air more enjoyable.
In the very, very early 1990's, I was on Prodigy, then later AOL. We were teens with lots of free time and being completely obsessed with Flight Simulator and aviation in general. One kid, Geoff, decided it would be fun to start a make believe airline. So, he was the "CEO" or whatever, and as I had extensive experiencing fiddling with aircraft "designs" in flight sim, I became the official aircraft designer. I think there were 3 or 4 of us, on the entire online community, doing this stuff at the time.
It quickly spread and got gained members, and eventually split into two over the usual online quibbles.
I am still amazed at the online virtual airline community and what's grown around it such as vatsim. It's one of the few things that I can say "I was there at the beginning!", and I'm super proud of it.
I've never used VATSIM, but I do enjoy watching streams of the yearly "Cross The Pond" event, where thousands of pilots fly across the Atlantic on VATSIM[1].
I have used PilotEdge quite a bit though, and having virtual ATC really adds a lot to the experience of flightsimming–it forces me to plan my flights in detail, taking into account all the air spaces, writing down frequencies ahead of time, checking weather, briefing the various phases ahead of time.
I think there's also something interesting and different about VATSIM and PilotEdge, in that they don't really care what game you're using (as long as it's supported by their network), but all the players are still in the same world--which is a close digital twin to the real world, at least in all the respects that aviation cares about. It's like if WoW players and EverQuest players were in the same world and could interact with one another. Are there any other "games" or layers over games that do that sort of thing?
BTW, PilotEdge does offer a 5 hour free trial, and they have an excellent tutorial series, the Communication and Airspace Training (CAT) program[2] which starts out easy (on the first flight you don't even have to talk to a controller) and gently progresses though increasingly complex situations: Non-towered to Non-towered then non-towered to class D, then class D to class D, until by the end you're flying in and out of class B. On each flight you get a pass/no-pass. And they have a similar series for IFR, the I-ratings. Every rating has a nice writeup and youtube video.
Heh, thanks for the reminder. I haven't crossed the pond on VATSIM in a long while; I plan to do it this April, which should be a westbound crossing—generally about 2 hours shorter than the eastbound.
While IVAO is more popular in Europe than IVAO is in North America, VATSIM is still more popular in any given region. If you think ATC could be more realistic, or take into consideration anything you think might have been overlooked, I definitely encourage reaching out to your regional vice president. I highly suspect they will share your feelings, but they may be able to expand on what's technically and logistically possible. Sometimes the only barrier is a lack of volunteers! Even VATUSA was without a social media management team lead for several weeks until just a few days ago, due mainly to lack of volunteers.
When I was earning my instrument license, Vatsim was a huge part of my practice (for better or for worse). PilotEdge is best to get the fundamentals, but the cool thing about Vatsim is that your local area is very likely covered, which made it a different kind of applicable.
- study FAR/AIM and the above Pilot Workshops books for some specific scenarios
- sit in a chair and pretend you're doing radio comms for those same scenarios, and just practice saying out loud your parts as if you were really in that situation
- run through the scenarios with ARSim (this helps you get used to parsing the incoming info)
- https://www.liveatc.net/ - listen to real world conversations, and try to anticipate what info will be given and what responses will be expected
- VATSIM and/or https://www.pilotedge.net/
- get up in the air and talk to real ATC
If you do the above steps, by the time you get to the last one, you might fumble it a little at first but otherwise you'll do ok, and you'll be head and shoulders over many, many other pilots out there.
arsim is definitely one to keep an eye on, it's fairly new but a great example of what generative AI might be good at (given the limited number of words used during ATC interaction)
I'm neither a pilot nor even a player of flight simulators, however I have a deep geeky fascination for ATC and radio communication. I would have liked to get into vatsim, but the process seems a bit daunting. For what I could tell, not sure if it changed, you have to contact a local organization, many don't really explain how, etc. I ended up not putting the effort.
Contacting a local organization is mostly finding their website to figure out how they train and approve ATCs.
Years ago, the region I was part of had a progression training where you had to read materials, shadow an active ATC for an X number of hours and then take a test. This was for each ATC level - you started as Ground, then Tower, Approach and Departures, and so on. For each level there was reading material, shadowing, and a test. It was quite demanding but very rewarding.
I've spent a lot of time flying on VATSIM/IVAO, and some time controlling. I also eventually got my real-world Private Pilot License.
VATSIM is an amazing community and the quality of the ATC service offered is incredibly high. It definitely helped a lot with becoming more comfortable with using the radio as a real world student pilot. I also expect that it will help me with my instrument license once I decide to do it.
For anybody looking into VATSIM and alternatives, the pros of PilotEdge are that there is guaranteed ATC staffing with paid ATC (not volunteers like on VATSIM), controllers are likely higher quality on average, and you will be making all of the radio frequency changes you would in the real world (although often talking to the same controller just on a different frequency). The pros of VATSIM are much wider ATC coverage (PilotEdge is western US only, VATSIM is global) and much higher pilot volume (PilotEdge has 16 pilots online right now).
I got my PPL irl last summer. IMO PilotEdge is fantastic for real pilots/student pilots that want to practice realistic VFR and/or IFR procedures.
But if you want to just "have fun" VATSIM is the way to go, at least for me.
Like PilotEdge I always use with a Cessna 172 and pair the sim up with ForeFlight. I'll expand my planes on it as I expand the planes I fly in real life. But the goal is to mimic real training as close as I can.
I've been intrigued by VATSIM for over a decade now, but never tried it for a few reasons, including:
* I don't think I would handle stressful situations very well.
* I have no experience on either side, and find it difficult to get interested in the actual flying part, so ATC would be the absolute most I could do.
* And perhaps most importantly, I have no intention of actually pursuing an ATC career, and I worry that I'd be wasting people's time if I tried to do anything.
But despite all that... I'm still interested. I might need a lot of mentoring if I tried, though, especially since I'm not as passionate as I imagine many others would have been.
Given all this, do you think it's something worth trying? Or is it the sort of thing where I need to be more self-directed than I am? (Is mentoring even a thing in VATSIM?)
If you're not interested in the actual flying part then I'm not sure if it is worth it?
I think the path for most people is first they get interested in flight simulation, frequently in the context of flying airline jets. They start learning how that airliner works. How to start it up. How to program a flight plan & performance figures into it. How to use the autopilot. The concept of SIDs and STARs (departure and arrival procedures) (and again how to program them into the plane) and finally learning about all the different types of approaches like an ILS approach which allows the plane to break out of extremely low level clouds (think 200 feet, sometimes less!). And finally, how to perfect landings.
They do all of that usually offline. On their own, or with some plugins that inject fake AI traffic to make it a bit more immersive.
Then finally, once they have a grip on most of the above, then they hop onto VATSIM to add the challenge (just at start) and fun of talking to ATC and listening to other pilots. It just is really a great immersion factor to know there is another human being operating the plane that you're taxiing behind.
But if none of that initlal stuff sounds very interesting to ya then (1) no problem!! It's understandably not everyone's cup of tear but then also (2) probably not worth getting into VATSIM.
But if VATSIM on its own kind of intrigues you then maybe you can live vicariously through people on Twitch playing MSFS on it, or YouTube searching "msfs vatsim full flight"
Thank you for the reply, and sorry for my delayed response.
I actually meant being in VATSIM from the ATC side of things, not as a pilot! (Since the ATC side is all volunteers as well.) You seem to be describing how a pilot would be on VATSIM... though then again, maybe that's how a lot of ATC personnel get involved?
VATSIM’s pretty neat, really enjoyed flying in sim using it before I got my actual license.
I’m not sure how much it helped though, the real challenge (at first) is making your brain handle “fly the aeroplane” and “talk to people” at the same time.
Discovered VATSIM by chance watching a Youtube video about MS FlightSimulator and was impressed by the dedication of the various participants. This is the kind of stuff that make the internet awesome.
Due to the higher fidelity scenery in newer flight sims (like MSFS 2020), I like to fly VFR (visual flight rules -- not relying on instruments for navigation, good weather, basically what you see when a typical Cessna 172 flies over your house).
In general, it seems VATSIM is more focused on IFR and people flying routes in airliners from Point A to Point B using various navigation waypoints.
That said, I still wanted to try it out and was really nervous. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, got everything setup, loaded up on a ramp KBOS with VATSIM coverage in my trusty Cessna 152 and sat there listening to the ridiculous amount of radio traffic. It was pretty awesome.
Finally, I got the courage to make my first radio call and it was insanely nerve-racking! (I recorded a video of my first call, happens at 1:55. Apologies for the bouncy video, was using some head tracking software) [1]:
Me: "Boston Tower, November 112 Charlie Delta, requesting radio check."
Tower: "November 112 Charlie Delta, Boston Tower, you're 5x5, how me?"
Hahaha! That was pretty damn cool!
It felt good to talk to and listen to other people via voice chat in an Internet game without being called some slur, music blasting in the background, or people yelling at their mom to get them Cheetohs.
EDIT: There was a guy awhile back who would stream his VATSIM controller sessions out of KBOS. I haven't seen him online in ages. But I think he was the controller I was talking to. Here is a 10 hour (!) stream of one of his sessions. The dude was amazing. [2]
Totally fair point. I think VATSIM shines in IFR yet MSFS arguably shines at lower altitudes / in a more VFR way where you can sort of do whatever you want (i.e. don't have to fly an assigned heading or route).
I think flying VFR in an unrealistic way (ignoring airspace, altitude restrictions etc.) is plenty fun.
But, if you want to fly "realistic" VFR you could consider PilotEdge. It's like vatsim but more heavy on GA and commonly used by real life student pilots that want to practice procedures and ATC comms as close as possible to real life.
I recommend reading Dencker's See How It Flies[1] and trying to get a feeling for what he discusses in the simulator. It will take some hours to become really comfortable with an airplane, and only after that should you consider VATSIM.
Step 1: Have an interest for it. It sounds like you might!
Once you know you want to, I think YouTube is a really fantastic resource. Also an active community on reddit (r/flightsim, r/MicrosoftFLightSim etc).
I recommend Microsoft Flight Simulator for most people just because it visually looks the best. People will say other sims have better flight dynamics but I'd argue that doesn't matter for 99.9% of people.
You need a pretty good PC to run MSFS though. There's also an Xbox version but it is less extensible. For example, you can't do VATSIM on Xbox.
I think at first you can just spawn on runways with the plane on and treat it more as a game than a simulator.
Then you can start spawning at parking spots which will have your plane turned off. You can just youtube "<plane name/type> cold and dark start" and you'll get plenty of videos that show the procedure of getting the plane started (it is more complex than starting a car).
Above is true whether you start out flying a Cessna 172 or a Boeing. Neither way is technically wrong in the sim, lol.
Note MSFS itself has a "learn to fly" section which teaches you some fundamentals. You could consider that a lightweight curriculum.
Once you want to get more serious you could look up the FlightInsight youtube channel. Real pilots use it to learn. Also, there is a service similar to VATSIM called PilotEdge which is like a more realistic version of VATSIM. One of the things it offers is a training curriculum that goes into way more depth than MSFS's native one: https://www.pilotedge.net/pages/training-program-overview. But note this is if you really wanna take it seriously. It teaches you things like airspace considerations and more. It's frequently used by real student pilots.
Yes, they updated the audio codec a few years ago. Now it sounds great. They also updated the live position syncing system so that other planes move much more smoothly across your screen
I've had some truly amazing experiences, including the night before my first discovery flight at KPAO when KPAO was miraculously towered in vatsim (it almost never is compared to the major airports in the Bay).
I logged in and started flying the pattern with a very friendly controller. Somehow we ended up with a full pattern which I've never seen at a GA field in the sim.
Eventually we all started chatting, and turns out the controller used to fly out of KPAO IRL, and another local pilot was in the pattern. I got a bunch of great tips on sight maps for the pattern there, airport procedures and best practices, etc.
It sounds cheesy but it was one of those magical Internet moments of connection with other people that sticks with you forever.
Nailed everything during my discovery flight the next day.