VFRs and Single-Sector Runs

Published: July 10, 2017

*FYI* Most of these posts form here on out (until I leave OKC) will be specific information geared towards ATC students/controllers/future RTF students. I’ll make sure to make it known if the post is about general information, though.

Last Friday in labs we ran more problems (I think we are up to level 4 or 5 problems, they go up to 13). We haven’t done anything that’s been particularly butt-kicking yet, though I’ve ignored my fair share of VFRs during the problems, just because they always call you when you have something else to do (the problems are designed that way) and I don’t like getting behind.

I recall Friday’s problems being fairly chill and straightforward scenarios. I suppose most of them vary in the operations count depending on where the focus is (Academy airport vs satellites) – but most of them are fairly balanced – probably 2-3 academy operations for each satellite operation you handle.

Friday afternoon we did a problem that seemed to have more VFR pop-ups than IFR operations, so that was slightly annoying, but good practice, I suppose (or something like that). Unlike in my college training, the VFRs will request practice approaches, IFR clearances, etc, whereas in college we just vectored them to the tower and they’d want to do pattern work (most of us as pseudo pilots would drop them before it got that far, haha). Anyways, later on Friday we were supposed to start a new level problem, but somehow the wrong problem got loaded into the sims and we re-ran a problem we’d already done that day, so it turned into a free run for the people on position (I was monitoring that run, anyways).

Today (Monday’s) problems got a little busier (I think they step them up pretty gradually, just like tower side did), probably always talking to a couple academy arrivals and at least one satellite. Almost all the problems at this level have a “local” VFR airplane flying around doing “photo missions” or “sightseeing.” I started on North sector today, and, well, it could’ve gone better. I had to deal with a couple slow guys clogging up my final and I didn’t have a solid plan to work them in, so my instructor gave me some tips.

My next run on South sector went a lot better, it seemed pretty Jeske (satellite military base in the academy land airspace) operation heavy with military stuff and a helicopter. We ran another set of problems, I don’t remember anything specific about them, but they went fairly well I guess. I remember my instructor saying it was better than my first run, so improvement is good, especially for a Monday.

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, our problems flip flop from west-east flow each scenario (so every three problems, since we rotate in our teams of three students). 3 runs of 28L/R ops, 3 runs of 10L/R ops. This is different than tower where we did mostly 28L/R ops except for the occasional day of 10s.

Our last two problems today were single-sector arrival-only problems. Basically, we run the whole airspace ourselves, but it was only fast-moving jet/turboprop academy arrivals (no satellites, departures, etc). Every once in a while, the planes would be a straight-in, but the rest of them came from the opposite north corner (no opposite-dual downwinds or base entries), the problem was mostly to work on final turn-ons and speed control. I only made one mistake the whole run, and my instructor said I did a very good job and sound very good in my speech rate and phraseology.

Tomorrow, we will finish our single-sector problems and move on to something else, I guess! Stay posted!