IVAO Hellenic Division News

The Hellenic Division of IVAO has grown to over 430 members in the past two years. The group has created a new web site to support their online flying activities and is working on a training division. Additional flightsimmers interested in online ATC controlled flight are welcome. For more information, click on Read More.

The Hellenic Division of IVAO has evolved over the last 2 years. It seems that the Hellenic flightsimming community supporting IVAO's activities has grown over the past years, consisting of more than 430 members and over 36000 hours in the IVAO network. As a result of this great support from our members, the Division had to upgrade its services.

First of all, we have improved our web presence in the internet with a new webpage, now containing all information needed for a pilot or a controller to fly or control in the Hellenic airspace. In coordination with our flight operations department, a whole database, consisting of IFR charts, Standard Routes, Airport lists, Coverage Instructions etc, was put online in order to provide with all the essential information a prospective pilot or controller might need, when visiting the airspace (click here). A new portal was introduced to host several aviation tutorials, product and Hellenic event reviews, prepared by our instructors and members. Finally, a photo gallery was developed to host screenshots from events or interesting real aviation photos, submitted by our members.

Moreover, SITA.aero is been identified as the more reliable source to promote aviation spirit within virtual activities. As a sign of world recognition, SITA.aero approved the use of the ivao-hellas.aero domain name for the Hellenic Division of IVAO. Therefore, one can access our web services via the portal http://www.ivao-hellas.aero.

Most importantly, the Hellenic Division is greatly interested in our members' training. Our web development team introduced a pioneering training system, named Apollon. Through the Apollon training system, the Hellenic division's instructors offer regular training to our members and any IVAO member (both pilots and ATCs), covering both theoretical and practical issues of flying and controlling. Moreover, the Hellenic Divisions's instructors produce their own manuals in order to cover certain issues of aviation, that are not covered by IVAO manuals. Through the apollon system, the Hellenic division can keep a more personalised record of our members' experience, resulting to an overall improved ATC and pilot service in Hellenic airaspace (click here).

Finally, a number of events are organised for all IVAO members by through our events department. A monthly VFR event, named Dirty Dozen was introduced with huge success, covering small VFR routes inside or outside the Hellenic airspace (i.e. Nepal, Iceland etc). Every Monday from 1900-2100z, some of the major airports and sectors are manned for our ATCs and pilots to practice on Online Mondays. The Hellenic division has organised and is about to release Hellas Tour, where a pilot has to finish several VFR-IFR routes covering the whole of Hellenic airspace plus neighbouring airports. This resembles IVAO's world tour, however, it is more focused on the Hellenic airspace and consists of smaller duration routes. In cooperation, with our special operations department, a unique SAR event is going to be out soon. In addition, we have organised several fly-in's with the Turkish, Maltese, Romanian, Israeli and Italian divisions, not to mention coverage of several Virtual Airlines events or fly-ins. Any virtual airline wishing to use the Hellenic airpace for any event can contact our events department to request for ATC coverage or any kind of assistance concerning the hellenic airspace.

Although the organisation is mainly supporting Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2002/2004, the hellenic division has a growing number of members using X-plane as their main simulator. As a result, most of our activites support both simulators.

We hope that this article will steer more people towards flying online with real ATC and training in real events rather than flying offline using the cold and lonely ATC and training environment of FS2002/FS2004.

With compliments

IVAO Hellenic Division
gr-hq@ivao.org