VATEUD Pilot Training Department

Introduction to the Training Manual

Index

1. Introduction
2. Conventions
3. Concept

1 Introduction

Since many years, VACC-SAG had a Pilots Training Manual. This was recently rewritten and amended by Andreas Fuchs. With his permission, VATEUD PTD will translate those documents from German to English and make them available for all European pilots.

As this is a long process, the manuals will be released step by step.

As the German version, this document is set up as a guideline for all basic knowledge that is needed for VATSIM. But English is the language that is needed in aviation – for education as well as for communication.

Andreas Fuchs, the author of those documents, is a commercial pilot and tries to bring in real world aspects of flying. Nevertheless he has managed not to get lost in details. Not everything in VATSIM is the same as in reality, so some things are Nice to Know and others are Need to Know. The online environment requires certain compromises of reality. Andreas also points out these differences. When you read this manual you always have to be aware that this manual is not perfect and it does not claim to be perfect – in aviation, many procedures can be approached differently and all pilots learn those procedures slightly different. So all of the procedures displayed here are subject to personal preferences.

If you read those first lines again, you will once again see that the most important word in aviation has already been mentioned:

Communication

That is most important as it is the best way to communicate witch each other. You always have to be aware of the problem that air traffic controllers and pilots are at different places and can only communicate with words! As flight safety is the always the first priority you always have to be aware of what the other side has on his mind.

So please remember this sentence – print it out, pin it right next to your monitor – the basic principle of aviation is:

if I do not understand something

if I am not able to follow an instruction

if I am not familiar with something

if I am in doubt, even if it sounds most stupid

I will ask!

what I say has to be as clear as possible

2. Conventions

First of all we should make sure you will find your way in this manual we should be clear about the conventions used in this text.

Bold plus italic means important information that needs to be emphasized. Those do not claim to be complete, there are possibly many things that are important but now marked as such.

3. Concept

The manual is built on a modular basis. Each larger topic basically is its own little manual. It is suitable if you want to learn on your own, but also as an addition to the pilot training programme organized by your local Pilot Training Department and which would be the best mix of theory and practice.

Important: we want to emphasise that for practical training you should use small “back alley” airfields so that training does not interfere with regular traffic at large airports. The examples will sometimes use bigger airports but perhaps you should not fly from London to Paris during peak time when you are online for the first time.

We want to conclude this introduction with a small detail: Your flight simulator should be configured to International – US-american so we don’t get mixed up with different units (feet and meters, Celsius and Fahrenheit).

We wish all of you success and fun at training! If you find any mistakes, feel free to contact us. We’re looking forward to it as we want to improve the manual constantly.

Yours

The VATEUD Pilot Training Department Team