RTF - Tl;Dr

Published: July 22, 2017

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Here’s the Tl;Dr summary of RTF, for those interested:

- RTF = Terminal Radar Training
- One month in OKC at the MMAC, which started mid-June for me
- RTF is currently a pass/pass “workshop” format class for BUE members in the agency
- Rob M was an awesome instructor and knows how to make people laugh and knows the material of the class, and how to skirt the rules in academy-land.
- 8 Classroom days, 13 days of labs, all 7:00am-3:30pm
- Teams of three students in the labs, and one instructor. They work hard to get the same instructors in the same lab (with the same students each day).
- Two block tests and three lab skills checks (but it’s a pass-pass course).

Breakdown of each days:

1. Houskeeping, schedules, stuff like that. Lesson on AAC airspace, LOA/SOPs, academy land rules
2. Lesson on Primary/Secondary radar systems, STARS keyboarding and entries, part tasking on setting up STARS scopes. After lunch - piloting lesson and part-tasking on piloting.
3. Radar identification lessons, transfer of radar ID lesson, basic phraseology. Part tasking for said lessons. Lesson on separation standards, wake turbulence, etc.
4. Vectoring and speed control lessons, and associated part-tasking, including the “vector maze.”
5. Altitude lesson, then took the block test for what we’d learned thus far. After the test we did a lesson on departures and an associated part-tasking exercise.
6. Arrivals lesson, which included various approaches and separation standards, then associated part-tasking.
7. Last full day of classroom. Various lessons, including additional services (TCAS, laser illumination events, wildlife activity), Visual approaches, VFR services, and Emergencies. Lastly, a lesson on weather. No part-tasking today.
8. Final block test on second half of the course, and then some part-tasking. STARS lab orientation too.
9. First day in the labs, 7 runs a day on a normal day. Teams of 3 students 2 instructors, rotate North sector, South sector, monitor run.
10. Second day of labs, still pretty new. Getting used to our instructors. Mark (the manager of the RTF program) evaluates a new instructor and chews me a new one for how I ran my problem (very rude).
11. Days 11-15 were all progressively more difficult labs, all standard days with 7 runs a day, except for day 15 where we had 6 runs.
12. Day 16 – Skills check on the North sector, a student runs the south side, monitor is not welcome in the labs.
13. Day 17 -18, worked on more scenarios, progressively more difficult.
14. Day 19, skills checks with an instructor running south, graded on the north sector.
15. Day 20 – targeted problems (supposedly). We got new instructors, which was difficult to change technique after 2 weeks.
16. Day 21 – last skills check (for our pass-pass class) and then a few targeted (have fun) runs.
17. Travel day. All done with RTF.

Summary

Overall, RTF was fun for the most part. Fortunately, it wasn’t graded (pass-pass) so we just focused on trying to do our best in the problems and not screw up too badly. The month in OKC kind of sucks, but it’s nice doing it away from the facility where you’re constantly being graded and evaluated.

Next up, back to my home facility to start classroom, followed by a couple weeks of sims, and finally

"spread your wings and fly"