Guest Posted July 23, 2011 Report Share Posted July 23, 2011 Hey All, This is Casey, I'm new to any sort of ACARS program, but not to vatsim. I'll give a bit of background on myself, because if we choose kACARS, you will likely see a lot more of me. I'm vatsim member 981110, a P1 pilot, a C1 controller, the vZDV Facility Engineer, and most importantly for this purpose, the Central Dispatch Manager for Mountain Air Virtual Airlines (MTN). We are in our 13th year, being founded at Denver International Airport in 1998 by Gary Widup and company, and we are still going strong. We now have a presence all over the country as well as operations in Europe and San Juan. We are looking to begin offering an ACARS program to our pilots that will integrate tightly with our existing database, flight dispatch system, and can report back to that database. kACARS is one of the obvious choices and is therefore one of those we are considering. Anyway, enough about me, lets talk about kACARS. My question is this. I see there is a free version as well as many upgradable versions. What would be ideal for us, would be if we could use the free version for a while and be sure it is going to work for MTN, as well as to determine which of the paid features we will need. So, if we begin using the free version, how painful will the upgrade to the other version be? I would think the back end would be the same for all the versions, is this true? Or do the additional features, and optional adders each require additional customization of the scripts and database? Thanks for the info. Casey mtn1474 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lorathon Posted July 24, 2011 Report Share Posted July 24, 2011 1 FREE - You are more then welcome to use the free version forever. 2 CUSTOM - A custom app uses the same basic principles as the FREE but it uses different files. I would estimate that it would take 10 minutes at the most to set up the custom app on a host. It is painless to move from the free to the custom and also they can both run side by side. I am sure some of the VA's that have purchased the Custom can comment. Let me know if you have any issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 25, 2011 Report Share Posted July 25, 2011 Hey, thanks for the quick response. I do have another question. I understand that kACARS is designed to be used with phpVMS, but our VA is 13 years in and is not looking to adopt a framework for their operations. How might I go about setting up the backend to function with our existing system, database, etc. I've done it with xACARS and that was fairly simple, as they provided the sql queries to create the tables as well as some php scripts that when placed on the server interface the users to the database. Is something like this available to adopt kACARS into our existing structure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lorathon Posted July 25, 2011 Report Share Posted July 25, 2011 Since this is the phpVMS forum I really do not think that your question is appropriate here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 25, 2011 Report Share Posted July 25, 2011 Ok, I was under the impression that this was also the official support forum for kACARS. Is there a separate forum for just kACARS? The only reason I was asking it here was because when I go to the kACARS web page and click on 'support forum', this is the one that it takes me to. Also, this forum's description is "The forum for the kACARS application"; so frankly, I'm not sure where else I should be asking this question. If all of this is true, than I would have my answer. No, what I'm asking is not possible. If that isn't possible, that is fine. I just want to make sure my VA understands our options before we make a decision. All the best, -Casey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lorathon Posted July 26, 2011 Report Share Posted July 26, 2011 Email me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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