On Saturday, December 30, 2020, the first “2021 First Day Sunrise Flight” event with air traffic control service was held by the SHA Flight Operations Department.
Introduction
SHA held its second event, the “First Day Out at First Foot”, which was the first time for SHA to hold a controlled online flight.
About the flight control information tools
The event used a control system that was arranged by the SHA control department. We will give you an overview of it first.
JoinFS (common to Pilot and Controller)
JoinFS (common to Pilot and Controller) <! Of course, each aircraft will also share its location information with each other, and the other aircraft’s status will be shared on the flight simulator.
JoinFS can be implemented in all of the flight simulator engines: Prepar3D, FSX, X-Plane, and MSFS2020.
ESJFS (Controller tool)
ESJFS is a bridge application to supplement the aircraft information provided by JoinFS in the radar client software “EuroScope” described below.
EuroScope (Contoroller tool)
The position information of each aircraft and other information supplied via the two tools mentioned above will be displayed on the radar client tool “EuroScope” (see image above). Using this screen, ATC service is performed with the voice sharing application “TeamSpeak3” described below.
TeamSpeak3 (common to Pilot, Controller)
The TeamSpeak3 voice sharing application provides transmissions originating from multiple pilots and air traffic controllers. Using plug-ins such as Radio FX, which adds radio-like effects to each sender’s voice, and BFSGSimCom, which links COM operations to TeamSpeak3 on some models such as PMDG, you can experience ATC situations similar to real flight.
These are both free tools. Both of them are free tools, and this event was conducted using them.
Event
- Leave Centrair before dawn and head northeast, aiming for the mountains.
- IFR (Instrument Flow) aircraft will proceed to the northwest side of the hill, reach three designated waypoints, and then enter the holding point. The south side will be the best vantage point from which to view Mt. Fuji and the first ray of sunrise together.
- On January 1, 2021, Sunrise at the top of the mountain will be at 6:42 AM JST. We will be above 15,000 feet, so we will be about 20 minutes early. We will leave around 6:00 a.m. to see the first sunrise together.
In conclusion
The event was conducted by three controllers and five pilots. It was the end of the year, and the first time we had a JoinFS online event, but we had a great turnout and everyone enjoyed the beautiful sunrise.
The event was also a great opportunity for all participants to improve their skills, as we were able to recreate in detail some of the rare cases of holding in both flight and ATC.
On the day of the event, we used our Discord event voice channel and screen sharing to enjoy conversations and screen sharing with everyone as we flew and controlled the aircraft, while ATC radio from TeamSpeak came in with realistic sound quality in our headsets, making for a rich audio service.
The above may sound like a difficult event, but even if you don’t know anything about it, it is an internal event, and our employees who are familiar with it can provide you with detailed information.
In the future, this system will be used as a tool for pilotage education and ATC education.
This system will be a great tool for pilot education and ATC education.