TSS Labs

Published: July 20, 2016

So first I’ll rewind to Monday since the webservers still weren’t entirely up on Monday and I was way too busy to post anything anyways. It was the last day of tabletop labs (thank goodness!) and I couldn’t be happier. Last day of tabletops/3D was alright, I had some pretty good runs and even had an instructor who didn’t believe that my background was “only” a four year degree (presumably because my run was so flawless).

Yesterday we had our final comprehensive test on the academics material. I felt pretty good going into this, despite my lack of studying compared to what I could have done. It was 133 questions and I finished after around 40 minutes or so, and got a 95%. It won’t put me at the #1 spot out of academics, but overall academics is only worth 10 percent of the grade anyways, so a lot can change!

After the test we had a briefing from the QA department, which is the department who administers the final assessments in the labs. They went over the grading criteria, rubric, what’s allowed, what isn’t allowed, things like that. He said that they’ll have a question-answer session the day before the PAs (performance assessments) to clear up any concerns we have, and he assured us we’ll fill the time with questions.

Next, we had our orientation day in the TSS labs, which use voice recognition (but still have RPO/Ghost pilots to fix the mistakes that the computer inevitably makes). We had 6 runs at 30 minutes each where we just rotated around the cab and ran the same, easy problem so that everyone had the chance to try out the voice recognition and see what works and what doesn’t work, as well as how your own voice plays with the voice recognition. The problem was pretty simple, 3-4 arrivals and 3-4 departures, and a handful of VFR guys in the pattern/departing.

The first two runs for our group (class was split into three groups) went fairly serious, but after that we started having a little more fun when we realized the instructors didn’t mind. Instructors aren’t allowed to “teach” during orientation night – only answer questions. We had some planes do some barrel rolls and do some other crazy things.

One thing I’m learning while doing these runs is that when the computer doesn’t react the way you want it to (or do at all what you told it to do), you just have to laugh. Getting bent out of shape or stressed over it is not going to make things go any better, in fact, it’s probably going to make it worse. Being able to laugh is very important in this industry! So, even though my run wasn’t perfect due to the voice recognition issues, I’ve just accepted that’s what it is and I’ll have to figure out ways to deal with it.

After our runs were finished, we had a briefing from the department that manages the RPOs/Ghost Pilots – they explained to us what they can “fix” in the computer, what they aren’t “allowed to” fix in the computer (what we have to catch ourselves), and gave us some helpful tips on what we can try to make things go more smoothly (talking without blending words together, speaking at a good pace, etc).

We also got booted out of our classroom (yay!) and we are now in a breakout room with comfy chairs where we can leave our stuff and hangout between runs.

Most of my class seems to hate being on nights – I like it! I get to sleep in, casually wake up and get going for the day, get my lunch ready to bring in, and take care of other things (like my blog!). We get nights for this week and next week, and then we’re back to mornings for the last two weeks.

Best of all, this morning I woke up with a very refreshed feeling, knowing that the stress of studying every day is pretty much over. For the next three weeks, it’s all about perfecting the methods and techniques in the labs during the runs, and, in my opinion, very little to be studied outside of class (unless, of course, you still don’t know your phraseology…). Most of all, I feel relieved knowing that the rest of my time here at OKC will be skills in the lab, an area I am certain I will do exceptionally well.

Tonight in labs we have our IFR/IMC day – where we will primarily work on IFR separation in (I think) an IMC environment – which means separating planes on instrument flight rule flight plans (think big air carrier planes vs small private turboprop planes flying around for fun) in instrument meteorological conditions (think low visibility and overcast skies). I’m actually looking forward to these runs.

My lead instructor told me yesterday he expects me to be bored for the rest of this week since the problems really won’t ramp up until sometime next week or the week after, but I’m going to take that as a good time to nail down my workflow and get comfortable in the TSS lab and make sure I know how everything is going to work so once the traffic picks up, I can nail it!

Okay – enough writing for today (even though I have two hours until class starts!). Still in the progress of cleaning up some broken links on here and whatnot, so if you happen to stumble upon those, my apologies!

"spread your wings and fly"