Boston Virtual ARTCC’s biggest member meet-up of the year takes place in just a few months! FlightSimExpo 2018 is June 9-10 at Flamingo Las Vegas Resort.
Over the past few weeks, the conference has announced new exhibitors Aerofly FS2, Civil Air Patrol, FlightBeam Studios, FSDreamTeam, NATCA and Navigraph. They join a total of 30 confirmed exhibitors who are taking part in the flight simulation conference.
BVA member Tom Gauvin will be speaking at the event, joining Matt Ford in a discussion about home cockpit building. The complete initial list of speakers and the schedule at www.flightsimexpo.com.
Attendees of FlightSimExpo can also take advantage of some great activities before and after the conference. Just for registering, FSExpo attendees can get more than $200 off an hour in a real, full-motion Boeing 737 simulator. 50 lucky attendees will get the chance to tour Nellis Air Force Base on Friday, June 8 before the conference, and you can get over $100 off on helicopter tours around the Strip and Grand Canyon.
We expect 50-60 BVA members to attend the two-day event this June. Expo will be looking for a group of volunteers from BVA who will be on-site Thursday - Sunday to help out with preparing attendee bags, organizing badges and labels, running conference registration, and other activities. In thanks, the conference is hosting a dinner for BVA members on Saturday night that all community members are encouraged to attend.
Register for the event now at www.flightsimexpo.com, and book your hotel today! The $59/night hotel rate won’t be available for much longer. If you are attending the event, please list “Boston Virtual ARTCC” as your organization, and we’ll reach out closer to the day of the event with more information about how you can help the community represent itself at FlightSimExpo.
As may know, Don Desfosse recently retired as VATUSA1, head of the U.S.A. Division of VATSIM. In his five years of leadership, Don has helped steer the division into what it has become today, and paved the way for new ideas and collaboration across VATUSA’s 22 facilities.
Prior to serving as VATUSA1, Don was the Air Traffic Manager here in ZBW, and has remained an active controller within our organization throughout his tenure at VATUSA.
In celebration of Don’s leadership, we staffed up to “bring him home” from VATUSA’s headquarters in Oklahoma City to Boston. Flights departed OKC between 5-7pm ET, and more than 80 aircraft landed at BOS a few hours later. Controllers from ZFW, ZME, ZID, ZDC, ZNY, and ZBW all staffed up to provide full, gate-to-gate coverage during this event, and several current VATUSA staff members flew the route together (you’ll see them using the “USA” callsign).
One of our controllers posted a timelapse of the arrivals breaking out of the clouds at Boston during the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwQYMeBuH_s&feature=youtu.be.
We thank Don for his years of service within the ARTCC and Division, and look forward to his return as an Instructor and controller here at ZBW.
As most members may already know, the area previously covered by “Cape Approach” (Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Hyannis) will now be managed by controllers from the Boston Consolidated TRACON (A90) in Nashua, New Hampshire. The change occurred both in real life and here at BVA on February 11.
Now, controllers connected to the network as BOS_APP will be managing the “core” Boston area only, which is mostly congruent with the Class B airspace. Controllers connected as MHT_APP (the north area, from Laconia, NH down to just south of Nashua) or ACK_APP (the south area, from Plymouth to the ocean) will still identify as “Boston Approach” but will only control those select areas. As always, Boston Center will continue to cover any airspace that is not staffed by an underlying controller.
Last month's question was:
