Rocking Single Sector Problems

Published: July 13, 2017

So today was a pretty good day down in good ole Oklahoma City. The day started out with a Skills Check – as mentioned yesterday for those unfamiliar – just an evaluation by our instructor without them helping us. I ran second in our group – but they gave everyone different problems, so you can’t share hints or anything. Just like in tower – there are no surprises. It’s the same traps and setups as every other problem we’d already seen up to this point.

Mine went fine, I had one little debacle to the northeast where I had a SGF plane on V4 and had to break him off due to descending an arrival into him, or a James arrival, I forget. It was a zoo, whatever it was. I only got dinged for a couple things, didn’t have any separation losses, so I considered that win. Pretty low stress, but it can be difficult when you’re not very experienced and have no help, but it’s just a workshop after all.

After that, we started a new problem which was another combined, single sector, VFR pop up heavy problem. The problem probably had around 15-20 VFR popups, 5-10 academy arrivals/departures, 5 Jeske arrivals/departures total, and a handful of other satellite operations. I actually found both the west and east flow problems to be kinda fun. I really rocked it, answered all my VFRs, and got great compliments from my instructors. I’m pretty sure at one point my instructor was behind the problem, because he kept pointing at things I’d already done 5-10 seconds prior. I generally don’t like VFR pop-ups or VFR operations, but I see why they give us these problems to help us work on typing and talking (typing the flight into the computer to generate the beacon code). I usually suck at those in the tower, too, especially at remembering if they said they had the ATIS, but I’m getting better, and this practice obviously helps.

Working busy problems when you’re doing well is almost like the rush working busy traffic in real life, just that perfect balance of getting a little rush of adrenaline going when you know you’re killing it. Not to be confused with the adrenaline of wondering if your squeeze play is going to work! Being cheered on by your classmates or instructors gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside, too.

Hopefully tomorrow’s problems are as much fun, and then the weekend! Phew!