Most of us have used IRC at some point to inquire as to how badly we're losing CTC. A useful feature that might be added, however, would be a status indicator that, when prompted with /msg "IRC" ctcstat, would tell you where the convoys were time-wise (not sector-wise, you can just watch 201-202 for that)

for example

Serco Convoy: TBA
Itani Convoy: In Progress

or

Serco Convoy: Leaving -3 Minutes
Itani Convoy: TBA

This would be useful for people who have just logged in or have been AFK for a while to get back into CTC.

You do know that the Vendetta<->IRC conduit is not affiliated with Guild Software, right? It's run by a player known as FiReMaGe, who used to be the #1 player, but whom I haven't seen around much any more. It'd probably make more sense to talk to him directly. His website can be found at http://mage.vo-gate.com/ but there's no contact info there.

irc.slashnet.org #vendetta you can find him there.

<offtopic-personal opinion>
argh ... NO!
I _hate_ it that players just jump in and out for the damn convoys.
(Yes ... I know ... I used to do it too :P)
</offtopic-personal opinion>

Enable timestamps in your IRC client and make the backbuffer large enough to fit about an hour of talk into it. There's usually enough chatter that you can easily measure the time from the anouncement till the start.