Hello everyone!
I thought I’d get used to posting topics and posts on my opinions in regard to local airfields. First! Some background information… EGNM is my local airfield and I love flying into Leeds on IF and in real life. Some fun facts about this airfield is it’s a single runway airfield facing 140 and 320 degrees. It has the highest airport elevation above mean sea level in the UK to my knowledge being 681ft or 208m high. Now the main reason I love landing at Leeds not only because it’s my local airport and has a very simple taxi system and less than 20 gates. Is also because the direction of the runway can pose some moderate to severe crosswinds which is always a good challenge on IF depending on the weather (being up north it’s pretty much bad weather 24/7 lol).
Now the reason for the topic, thank you for reading this far already! I’ve always liked the idea of controlling the airfields simple ATC network but with unfortunately one downfall. That is not many users fly in and out of Leeds. This is understandable given the vast amount of airports available and of course wanting to fly online with the airports that have ATC coverage on the training server (which I find the big one is usually EGLL). But I find the local airports really useful to those below grade 3 who are wanting to gain skills and knowledge of how the ATC controllers work and to become accustomed to flying traffic patterns and VFR rather than flying from point A to point B. Not only is this just as fun! But it gives users the ability to gain those important flight hours and landings to be able to progress further on the servers. Currently I can only access the training server for ATC whilst I brush up on my skills and hopefully get accepted to join IFATC in the future.
I’d just like to know who does fly to Leeds and see how popular it is with the community and/or if people would like to see smaller, local airports like Leeds manned by ATC more frequently?
If the community and staff here at IF are interested in such a proposal. I’d like the oppertunity to set a weekly regular ATC rota on the training server to have VFR flights and traffic pattern work at EGNM in the near future. Hopefully if this gains popularity within the IF community i’ll be making a social network page and group specifically for EGNM so new and existing users can benefit from having Leeds manned each week of the year much like how the expert server runs it’s ATC coverage. That would make me very humble indeed! Never the less you’ll find me on the EGNM ATC network on the trainng server a few times a week when I’m not flying.
I’d love to hear your comments on this topic!
Thank you for reading!
From Jason (IFSFG145)