To begin with, this is a long email so grab a cup of tea ( or something stronger ) and get comfy for a bumper edition of the monthly UK virtual newsletter.
September saw another increase of virtual flights at UK virtual in August from 722 logged flights last month to 970 flights at the time of writing ( let’s pass that 1000 mark before midnight tonight! ) As always thank you for your continued dedication and support at UK virtual, every time you complete a flight it makes the work the team puts into the virtual worth it, we couldn’t do it without you. Do read on for news on our Winter Tours, the new flight tracker, UK virtual cadets and UK virtual’s 9th birthday!
It’s our birthday!
This month is UK virtual’s 9th birthday, starting back on the 4th October 2011. During our time in the virtual airline world we have logged 49916 flight’s ( Hitting 50000 in the next few days ) over 82000 combined hours and now passed 2000 member registrations with the first UNI200+ hitting the skies.
We have a month of celebrations ahead of us beginning with some great prizes to be won at the end of the month. All you have to do is fly ten flights or more next month for UK virtual to be entered into the prize draw, each 10 flights equals one entry. Prizes include:
1 x DC Design Concorde
1 x UK2000 scenery of your choice
1 x ORBX airport scenery of your choice
5 x SimMarket Vouchers
UK virtual Merchandise
The prize draw will take place live on Discord at the end of the month as part of our Halloween spectacular! Also for the member who completes the 50,000 flight at UK virtual you will receive a very special prize indeed, so get those flights in!
Flight Operations – UNI154 Ryan
After careful consideration and feedback I am pleased to announce that the world tour will stay open for all members until April 2021. Part 4 will be released to UK virtual supporters tomorrow and then available from 1st November for UK virtual members right until April next year. You must complete all four parts to achieve your award.
Our summer tours close on the 14th of this month for the UK virtual Supporters with the Winter Tours being released the next day. For UK virtual members you will have to wait a little longer until the 1st November to access the Winter Tours, however if you can’t wait head over to our “Support Us” page and join the UK virtual Supporters to gain the early access and many other benefits from just £5 a month! That the price of a pint in the pub we are not allowed to purchase right now 🙂
There are alot of “double schedules” on the system from the Hub Project which cause some issues in the way information is displayed on the website. This applies to two separate routes that share the same flight number. Over the next few weeks I will be working my way through our 37,000 schedules and fixing them accordingly.
Finally it’s been a great month for our VFE challenge, many of our members took to the sky with flyVFE to earn vouchers towards their Virtual Flight Experience. I am pleased to announce that the winners are as follows:
1 x 90 Minute session – UNI1625 Colin
1 x 60 Minute session – UNI1992 Lewis
1 x 30 Minute session – UNI1531 Massimo
I will be emailing the above members soon in regards to claiming their prizes, and remember every 25 flights you complete for flyVFE in the B738 or Piper Seneca earns you a £5 voucher for your Virtual Flight Experience!
General Operations – UNI517 Mike
Last month we launched our UK virtual Cadets giving potential members under 18 the opportunity to join a virtual airline in a safe environment. We have seen a great uptake in membership for our cadets, and if you know of any one who would like to join UK virtual do send them the sign up link.
At the end of October, as part of our Halloween spectacular, we will be holding our quarterly UK virtual support prize draws. This month our supporters have the opportunity to win a framed aviation canvas of the members choice for their home!
And finally onto our group flights for this month. Further details can be found on the blog post, the dates for your diary are:
4th October – 9th Birthday Group flight – Newcastle/Durham Tees Valley
11th October – UK virtual Group flight – Manchester/Innsbruck
19th October – Prop hopping evening – Location to be confirmed
31st October – Halloween Spectacular – Prize Draws and Group flight
Technical Operations – UNI548 Tony
Testing on the new flight tracker continues with almost every flight I personally fly using the new tracker. There are still bugs to be ironed out, we do not wish to release an unfinished product, so we do thank you for your patience – trust us it will be worth it!
For those who use the FLAI Package now is the time to update, our liveries can now be seen by the online world! Thanks to Ali all our aircraft models match perfectly when a pilot uses the UNI callsign on the vatsim network, something we have been trying to achieve for years. All you have to do is run the update within the FLAI package on your PC.
Conclusion
And finally we would like to say a personal thankyou to our UK Virtual Supporters. All the prizes you see above, the VFE competition along with the FLAI package and flight tracker are paid for by the Supporters fund. Your donations each month really help us deliver great competitions, so thank you from the UK virtual Team. If you can support us, please sign up via the website so we can continue to offer monthly competitions and updates.
Keep those flight’s going as we head into the winter months and whatever changes in the real world that may bring.
UK virtual Team