WELCOME TO THE NEWSROOM - Full update monthly,
Important News as and when it occurs.
This Full Update 01/05/01.
UK Direct has a couple of vacancies for pilots.
Heathrow by Gary Summons looking good from 12,000ft.
Hello Everyone !
Let me just take this opportunity to say thanks to everyone who sent sympathetic messages of encouragement to me during my hours of need. For a brief moment I felt someone out there cares what I write!
So, what's in this months update then ? Ummm...errrr...oh yeah, I remember, I think.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire ?
No it's got nothing to do with asking the audience or going 50/50 but it does seem that if you "phoned a friend" then you're probably virtually filthy rich by now!
Sounds a bit dodgy? A little bit woooa an a little bit wahay know what I mean John? Well it seems that Mark Kidd and co-traders are amongst the financial elite in Virtual Airline trading. The richest men list looks like an Interpol Wanted Flier. Someone called Finney, Greenough, Mansbridge,Cheetham and further down the list a variety of seemingly familiar (dodgy) UK Direct Roster names.Whats the scam? Why UK Direct of course! Worth on paper at the time of writing a cool $200 million! on the VASM. Interested in joining in? Just look on the Information page to find out how you can go virtually topless by losing your shirt.
FS2K Fleet continues to grow.
Dave Finney has finished repainting the 767-300 for FS2000 and if only I could find that damn picture....grrrrr.... Dave is also reported to be spending a lot of time painting the 717, simply because the textures of the chosen aircraft are VERY complicated to work with. If it's the aircraft model that I found and flew then I can safely say it'll be a great aircraft to fly and by the time Dave has finished it'll look as pretty as a picture too! The 717 will be used on a variety of routes so keep your eyes open for routes NOTAMS. The replacement of the BAC1-11 will involve a lot of resource re-allocation. I don't think even the boss has got it all sorted out. I certainly haven't got my head around it yet !
G-UKDA over the East Midlands on its way to Leeds in early FS98 days.
Dave is also looking into a better visual models of the 1-11 for FS98 and 2K and repainting one in the earlier livery,as above, to be kept at Bournemouth for charter, checkrides and exams.(The flight model for the original aircraft is still excellent..ed.)
Cargo site up and running.
Dave Frankland has been busy re-organising the Cargo pages and to celebrate this I jumped into the left hand seat of the 707 and flew off to Israel at the weekend. I found the site easy to navigate, found my flightplan, downloaded the .fsn file and headed off to Manston. As you can see from the picture taken by a NATO F-16 as I wandered intoYugoslav airspace the weather was glorious! The arrival at Ben Gurion was very nice too as I was trying out some new Ben Gurion Scenery for FS2K. Lots static aircraft and ground vehicles but a bit of a frame rate muncher. Must tell Mark Greenough (Scenery) about that one.
Do you have any secret scenery discoveries that you might like to share? Well, give Mark Greenough the benefit of your experiences so we can all enjoy them.
Sandy Passes the 2000 hour mark!
Sandy Sandford continues to make Mark Kidds job as PIREP processor difficult. Not that he makes a lot of mistakes on his form filling it's just that he keeps using up the pages in his personal history file! Mark defies anyone to keep up. No sooner has he re-organised and reallocated more space then Sandy sends in another mass of PIREPS and fills it up again.
Anyway Sandy, Congratulations from all of your friends and colleagues at UK Direct on this incredible personal achievement.
New Web Site Operations Page Problems?
I have been experiencing some strange things whilst the Operations page loads on my browser. A couple of times I have had lock-ups. Has anyone else had similar trouble? If so can you drop Mark a line and mention what the problem appears to be. I'm sure I'm not the only one but apathy does tend to creep in to pilot admin and then nothing gets done to sort out problems like this.
Pilots Inaccurately Report Everything Possible
PLEASE FILL OUT YOUR PIREPS CAREFULLY!
The program that automates the processing of Pireps crashes when it tries to process incomplete entries and has to be re-started. There is also a possibility that other pilots hard work fails to be correctly logged and history pages can be corrupted. It just isn't fun sorting through 90 pireps at a time to find the ones that cause all the problems. Mark is going to start naming and shaming consistant offenders. Having seen some of the crass errors I'm amazed that anyone could be so patient in sorting through it all every week. So please guys, give him a break. Use 3 digit flight codes: eg 011 and it is the year 2001 now so put /01 not 00. And as far as we know UK Direct do not use an aircraft type called 'Other' thats the cue to enter the aircraft type.
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Newsroom Manager