Powerpoints and Part Tasking

Published: June 22, 2017

Day 2

(Preface with pre-OKC update is located here, if you need some catching up.)

Day two in OKC for round two, pretty standard post for tonight. Today started out with a very dry lesson on primary and secondary radar systems, given by a guest instructor (sorry guy, it was dry). The lesson was basically on the premise of being able to associate with tech-ops (maintenance) if we needed to for some reason about something radar related. For most of us, this information was all a review from tower class last year, or our previous experiences, schooling, etc.

That lesson lasted around an hour, and then we had another lecture on STARS, which is the radar system we will be using in the labs starting after our academic/classroom stuff is done. Basically, the lesson was on how to set up our own preference settings on the radar scopes – things like range, how big the data blocks (airplanes) appear, brightness, and different video map overlaps.

For every run we do, we will have to do a basic setup where we move our systems status area display (time, ATIS code, approaches in use, etc which is overlaid on the radar display) to wherever we prefer it (I guess it defaults to a deliberately annoying place to force you to learn how to move it… typical OKC there!), move our different lists (the radar screen will show different lists of aircrafts – arrivals/departures/overflights/etc) and set up any brightness or cursor speed settings as well. At our facility (and I’d venture to guess most facilities) you can save all these settings in a “pref set” and just recall it every time we work radar. I’m sure OKC wants you to learn the “long way” though – all part of that wonderful OKC experience.

After the lesson, we got to play around in a “STARS sandbox” for around an hour to practice the different settings. In academy-land, this is known as “part-tasking” – or taking one small part of a whole bunch of tasks and breaking it down to perfect it before you do it all together. Kind of the same as working on one part of a music piece before playing the whole song start to finish, or practicing using your blinker in a parking lot before you go on the interstate when learning to drive.

After that part-tasking exercise, we took our lunch. During lunch, I ran into an old coworker from the Delta hub I used to work at (aviation is a very small world) who is now here for basic training, and had a chance to talk to my classmates a little bit about their facilities. For the most part, everyone seems pretty cool and we all get along fairly well I’d say, so far.

After lunch, we did another lesson/part-tasking combo. This one was on pseudo-piloting. For our “real” labs starting the week after next, we get the real ghost pilots (similar to those in tower class), but for the part-tasking practice next week, we will be pseudo piloting for ourselves, so we have to learn some basic pseudo-piloting skills.

After a brief lecture on how to be a pilot, the commands to enter into the computer system, etc, we got to do some practice. The keyboard has a little template over it that shows you which buttons to press for different commands, speed, altitude, heading, crossing restrictions, approaches, etc. The computer for the pilot side prompts you what to say to the “controller,” when to ask for pilot requests, etc - it’s all on a script. Unfortunately, on the “practice” runs we did, there was no controller (since we haven’t been taught how to run the problems yet) so we just followed the prompts on the computer, which sadly, weren’t time-synced very well with where the airplanes were, so as a result it was asking us to turn planes onto localizers from the downwind. The instructors told us to give up on the prompts and just run it like we were the controller, so we got to have fun with a few scenarios on our own. It wasn’t a real sim, but it was better than a powerpoint for an hour!

After all the fun and games were over, we did about a 45 minute review of what we had covered for the past couple days (kinda felt like the instructor was reading over some key-questions from something…. maybe a test to come soon?), and that was a day!

Tonight, I took a walk down the river, like I always used to do while I was going through tower class. I remember walking down that path and wondering about where I’d go if I passed, how things would pan out, where I might be in a year. Being in OKC a year later, it feels much different than just a year ago. One more day, then the weekend!