Another busy month in the air at UK Virtual. As I write this we have 1216 flights completed in March, passing 57000 flights as an airline (very nearly at 58000). During the coming month the current tours will close and we will move to our Summer tours, with some nice ones written by our members.
We completed our charity event for the year – Project Sunrise, details of which can be found below, and we have some helpful tips for your next flight from Chris! Take a look, and enjoy our March Newsletter.
Flight Operations – UNI154 Ryan
Firstly, a reminder that the Winter tours are closing to make way for the Summer tours. They will be closing today (31st March) for our members. They will remain open until the 15th April for our supporters.
Summer tours will be open for supporters from the 16th April and open to all members on 1st May.
If you would like to have a few extra days to complete your tours or get hold of the Summer tours earlier, head over to our “Support Us” page and join the UK virtual Supporters to gain early access and many other benefits from just £5 a month! https://www.ukvirtual.co.uk/index.php/communityfund
April will be our UK domestic month, with prizes up for grabs for everyone. There will be a new 10 leg UK Staycation tour available, which can be flown in any aircraft. Please note this tour is available for one month only for all members. Everyone who completes this tour will be entered into a prize draw for a simmarket voucher. There will be 2 draws, one for members with 1 prize of a 25 euro voucher and one for our supporters with 1 prize of a 50 euro voucher. SIgn up ready for the tour here : https://www.ukvirtual.co.uk/index.php/tour/details/285
Finally, with the release of the A300/Beluga aircraft, this has now been added to the tracker aircraft list. Please ensure you select Airbus A300/ST when flying this aircraft.
Technical Operations – UNI548 Tony
We have been working on ironing out the last issues with the new tracker. Our latest update (1.0.0.22) has fixed an issue with how the PIREP submitted, which was causing some false failed to submit messages. This is now fixed and working well.
General Operations – UNI517 Mike
This month on the 5th/6th March, we completed our charity flying challenge Project Sunrise. This involved flying two almost back to back 20 hours flights, firstly from New York to Sydney, then after a brief nap London Heathrow to Sydney. This was done to raise money for project wingman (https://www.projectwingman.co.uk), which is a very worthy cause. Very well done to all those who took part in this challenge and raised a staggering £1421 (which UK Virtual have rounded up to £1500)!!!
For those you missed it, UNI2031 Ben put together this video of the flights:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp7ZOEvtouw
The money raised is going to be used to fund a second bus which will allow Project Wingman to offer even more support to our hard working NHS staff.
Flight Reports Manager – UNI1011 Chris
This is my first newsletter since joining the team of directors at UK VIrtual, so firstly just a brief introduction. I have been with this virtual airline since late 2016 (how time flies! – sorry no more puns), I can frequently be found in the voice rooms on our discord so feel free to say hello!
Only a couple of quick reminders from me regarding PIREPs:
First, there are a lot of PIREPs being submitted which contain stalls at the moment. We are aware that MSFS2020 is quite sensitive to stalls in some circumstances (we are looking at how to better detect stalls), but any PIREP with a stall should have a comment from the pilot explaining what happened. We do take circumstances into consideration but only if we know about them. If there are no explanations, the chance of a rejected PIREP is much higher.
Secondly, can we make sure that we file the correct aircraft type on PIREPs. If you aren’t sure which category your plane fits into, you can always ask!
Conclusion
Once again, thank you to everyone who donated to our project sunrise for project wingman challenge, it’s very much appreciated by ourselves and project wingman themselves.
Next month should be a good one with our UK Domestic month, and the new Summer tours opening up to our supporters. As the restrictions are gradually lifted and we can step back outside our homes again (maybe even frequent a pub!), just remember UK Virtual is still here for all your flying needs!
UK virtual Team