The VATSIM OCEANIA
Regional Conference was held over the weekend of September 27th
and September 28th 2003.VATSIM – OCEANIA REGIONAL CONFERENCE
SATURDAY September 27th – SUNDAY 28th September 2003
The VATSIM OCEANIA
Regional Conference was held over the weekend of September 27th
and September 28th 2003.
It was the first of its kind to be held in the OCEANIA Region and was hailed as an outstanding success. 50 members attended both the day, evening and Sunday session at the simulator
VATSIM members travelled from overseas and from around Australia with many staying at the Conference venue, the NOVOTEL HOTEL at Brighton-Le-Sands which is adjacent to Sydney’s International Airport.
An informal gathering of 16 members met for dinner on the Friday evening and chatted on well into the small hours before retiring for the evening.
Mr John Bower - Guest Speaker
The guest speaker was Mr John Bower from QANTAS. John is the B747
Classic, Manager Flight Engineers, Operations and Training. John took us through
over 30years of his career with QANTAS starting from when he worked in the
Engine Workshops repairing and rebuilding engines for the Super Constellation
fleet. He then gave an entertaining tail of his time as a Flight Engineer,
starting on the 707 through to the 747-300 series.
The conference commenced at 0900hrs sharp with each attendee receiving an
information pack and CD containing most of the presenter’s documentation and
slide shows.
All the presenters were VATSIM members from both the virtual and real world of aviation and I would take this opportunity of thanking the following;
Steve Young – ATSB Accident Investigation and Reporting. Steve gave us an informative presentation of accident investigations and incident reporting. He also brought along a Flight Data Recorder recovered from an Air force Boeing 707 that crashed during a training exercise.
Matt Sheil – B747-400 Simulator owner. Matt brought along a lot of pictures taken during the construction of this now famous simulator. He spoke about the construction and the efforts to achieve perfection in the simulator.
Daryl Lyons – Simulation or Reality. Daryl’s presentation consisted of a very professionally edited DVD which contained video footage taken during his career as a commercial pilot flying in and around Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Daryl was able to replicate many of these flights on FS2002 software and intersperse these with the real world footage and quite frankly in some cases it was very hard to distinguish between the two.
Terry Scanlan
Ed Watson, Steve Cullen and Norbert Finger – Represented the VA’s and took us on an around the world in
80 questions of interesting trivia which had a lot of the group struggling to
answer some questions about foreign parts.
After a quick break for lunch we got started on the more serious side of the day which revolved around ASRC, ATC, OCEANIC and finally GPS
Andrew Carr - ASRC Andrew started the first session after lunch with a full explanation of the functionality of ASRC and explained to our “Pilot Only” friends what we as ATC see on the other side of the screen.
John Keech – Advanced ATC Techniques. John gave a fascinating session on advanced tips for controllers. John is a retired real world Air Traffic Controller and was able to open a whole new world for us that specialise in giving ATC. His techniques of “separation” explained during the session are now being implemented by our ATC team. Once again another professionally presented slide show using power point styled presentation.
VATPAC Staff: Mark Richards, Skip Fulton, Rob Hooley, Dean Constantinidis, Terry Scanlan, Roland Collins and Andrew Carr
Dean Constantinidis and Jackson Harding – OCEANIC Operations – nice videos and actual voice recordings of OCEANIC radio procedures which took away a lot of the mystery of this “Over The Ocean” flying and position reporting.
Roland Collins – GPS and Beyond. Roland, who is well known to most of the VATSIM community, explained the workings of GPS navigation in Australia. Unfortunately being the last presentation of the day we were out of time and his lecture was unfortunately cut short. Roland is arranging to present this segment again in Melbourne Australia for those interested in this topic.
The day session finished at 1830hrs and we adjourned for a quick break before the dinner proceedings started.
The Dinner commenced at 1900hrs and was a sumptuous buffet which was well received by all attending.
A welcome note from Harv Stein was read out to the guests and other speakers were Terry Scanlan representing VATSIM, Mark Richards and Skip Fulton representing VATPAC the local OCEANIA Region Division.
The evening finished around 0200 with a few diehards swapping yarns and stories of days gone by.
SUNDAY AT THE SIM
Thanks must be given to Matt Sheil who opened his simulator for all the conference attendees on the Sunday. This was an informal day with many trying their hand at flying this magnificent machine.
A barbecue was provided for all attending and once again a very late finish to the day with Matt and myself shutting the sim down at 0030hrs on the Monday.