American Airlines Virtual

Some thoughts;

Reading the last post about FSacars and the FSX-SE brings up again a point I have had thoughts about.

We use the AAV recorder, FSACARS, the training departments old checkride program, the hangar with old aircraft parts.

As the newer and different operating systems take over maybe our programs are starting to show our "age" and discontinue to work faithfully, or will soon.

So now we have FS9, FSX, FSX-SE, LM P3DV1-2-3, X-Plane 9 -10, and dovetails new FS game platform landing soon. Sometime one of these will "break" our system of checks and recording.

Back to the paper test? Manual recording of flights for all? Send via USPS snail mail all FREQ and FREPs.

FYI,

Too much technology, too little time.

What I need is an AAV IT department (or I need to retire from my day job) to keep everything moving forward to new tools and applications.

I have a hunch that if we had a app that showed both on-line and off-line pilots flying, where they are, and allowed chat between pilots, it would resonate with the social media generation that we need to hook to keep our numbers up.

Michael Blakely wrote:Too much technology, too little time.

What I need is an AAV IT department (or I need to retire from my day job) to keep everything moving forward to new tools and applications.

I have a hunch that if we had a app that showed both on-line and off-line pilots flying, where they are, and allowed chat between pilots, it would resonate with the social media generation that we need to hook to keep our numbers up.

That would be cool. If I knew how to do any of that, I would be glad to help out but I don't. IT department is a great idea, just not sure if we have any qualified members or not.

I thought I had a little IT savvy until Windows 10 kicked my butt. I tried everything but could not get FSX to work properly with Win10. Finally conceded, admitted my defeat my defeat and reverted back to Windows 7.

Before this I was thinking I had enough PC knowledge to be able to learn what was needed and possibly assist with some of the IT task. But after this past 3wks. of fighting my computer, Windows 10, and FSX I don't want to learn any more or see another computer problem for a long while.

Wish I could help you out Mike, you need it.

I think FSACARS can be configured on the server side to show the airplane`s position on a map. I`m not a coder but I could try to figure it out if I had some type of test server I could use.

As for comms, we couldn`t ask for any better than Jose`s TS server. (Thank you señor!)

If DTG comes out with a decent and stable product, I think things will settle down a bit as far as the platform. We will all have to spend a ton of money on add-ons again but FS9 and FSX would die away and we would be back to a dependable sim that should be around for another decade or so.

We had someone doing the social media stuff. What happened with that?

On a side note and something totally and drastically off-the-wall, has anyone ever thought about going to Oneworld Virtual instead of just AA? We could use the rw tables directly from their site instead of having to constantly update ours and focus our server side on the membership, flight logging and training side of it. I`ve not seen a VA explicitly cover an entire alliance before. I`m just spit-balling here.

Norberto Rivera wrote:I think FSACARS can be configured on the server side to show the airplane`s position on a map.

I've only worked with FSACARS local store of all the flight data (on your PC) which is then sent to our we bsite all in at once when you hit "Send Log". Is there another interface I'm not aware of?

Norberto Rivera wrote:As for comms, we couldn`t ask for any better than Jose`s TS server. (Thank you señor!)

This is great for people that like to talk, but for the up-and-coming generations that are more comfortable with chat, I think a complimentary solution is needed.... or does TS also do chat?

Norberto Rivera wrote:We had someone doing the social media stuff. What happened with that?

He got busy. The role is open if anyone wants to volunteer.

Norberto Rivera wrote:On a side note and something totally and drastically off-the-wall, has anyone ever thought about going to Oneworld Virtual instead of just AA?

Wayne Joyner wrote:Well, Bert maybe on to something. Would we need any type of licensing or blessing from the powers that be at the One World Alliance to use their logo and their information? It could be interesting.

That space is more crowded than you realize. There are 5 active One World VAs right now. Several are VATSIM affiliates. I have actually been helping one of them by sharing our OneWorld time table exports. I do this to maintain standing as a "good citizen" in the VATSIM world. Helps when there are problems like conflicts over call signs or who gets to keep the "American Airlines Virtual" name on VATSIM.

The download page for FSACARS also has scripts for a position map here. A map is nice but at least an active flight list in table format would fit the bill I think.

TS will also allow you to chat via text in the flight room and privately with individual users. We use it all the time to send links to each other for charts and things like that.

I could take a stab at the social media stuff. I just need a little guidance on where and how involved we want to get with it and what we envision the end result to be.

I did not realize there were that many OW VA's out there (never really tried to look for one). The reason I brought it up was because the RW AA is not really winning the PR wars out there and I feel like that may be part of the reason why the roster is thin. They ranked 10th in the country and 79th in the world last year. Personally, I will not choose AA for a RW trip unless I have no other option. My experience with them has been awful to say the least. I flew out to Sacramento last summer and the crews have been rude, the seats keep getting smaller and they did not seem to have any incentive to get a flight in on time. In any case, it was just a thought. I place more of a premium on the content of our roster and pilot's manual than the livery on the planes. Do any of these other VA's you've helped out have different website solutions we could poach?

Lloyd, I am assuming your talking about the web page and its pictures. This current site was set up before the new AAL colors were instituted, hence the old color scheme.

Changing this site does take some time and so far no one in the rank and file, nor management, has made mention of that fact. I haven't thought about it until now.
WLP

Great observation Lloyd and thanks for mentioning it. Some of use put up banners and forget we're using them or never think of updating them. I know I will be cognizant of that going forward.

Lloyd Lassahn wrote:I am brand new but I will throw my two cents in to this conversation and point out that my first impression was an interesting setup but not sure how active it was given all the visuals show old AA livery. An effort should be made to more closely match appearance of actual AA if this is virtual AA.

Face Palm!

Lloyd, brilliant observation. I'll be enlisting the rank and file to create new pictures for our banner and hub images to get us "up to date". Thanks for the insight.

Lloyd - what do you think of the banners now?

Michael Blakely wrote:Lloyd - what do you think of the banners now?

Way to go Mike. I like the new banners, especially the American Eagle Dash-8 behind the taxi way signs.