Final (full) Classroom Day

Published: June 29, 2017

Classroom Day

Well, today we had our last (full) classroom day of RTF, and I think I speak for everyone (including the instructors) when I say today went by pretty slow. Fortunately, we had frequent breaks to stay awake and refresh on coffee and sugar! We covered the following lessons today:

Additional Services:

This lesson was pretty dry. It talked about duty priority of air traffic controllers, issuing traffic, laser illumination issues, TCAS alerts, and, a favorite at my home facility, bird activity!

Visual Approaches:

Visual approach lesson was mainly a feel-good lesson, considering we don’t do visual approaches in academy land. Their theory is if we can vector for approaches (which requires longer downwinds, turn on requirements, etc), visuals are just easier in the field (since they have less rules, generally speaking). This coincides with my college training where visual was prohibited, so no harm here. When I get back to my facility, that’ll change, of course. The end of this lesson talked about parallel and triple parallel runways, so that was a bit non-relevant to most of the class, but our instructor did his best to keep us entertained with his stories.

Radar Services to VFR Aircraft:

I always find this stuff interesting, because so many people in the field have different opinions and interpretations on the rules in this area. Most of this was on separation rules of VFR to IFR in controlled terminal airspace. We also covered enhanced separation in Class C, B, and TRSA airspaces.

Emergencies:

We discussed emergencies after lunch. We had a good instructor for this part, he told lots of stories, and made a long lesson manageable (though it still took a long time to get through). I think the most important takeaway from this lesson was how important proper phraseology is, because any time anything bad happens (emergency, crash, worse), your “tapes” will be pulled, and you’ll be scrutinized for why you didn’t use prescribed phraseology, regardless of whether or not it was even a factor in what happened.

Our instructor for this portion told us lots of stories about how planes had crossed runways they shouldn’t, tried to lie about it, and planes that had flown into bad weather and not made it out. Don’t worry, he told us some good stories too with happier endings. The point was, we are all a team in the aviation industry and need to support each other while working together.

Weather:

For our last classroom lesson of the day, we had a short lesson on weather. For anyone who’s gone through basics, this is a short review compared to that (from what I hear) and similarly short compared to the tower initial class. Our instructor for this section was passionate about the subject, which always helps. He told us some cool weather-related stories (and some sad ones, too). He knew we were reaching the end of the day, so he kept it lively for the last lesson.

Tomorrow:

Tomorrow we will do a short lesson on FDIO (flight data input output), which is the computer system, we use for amending flight plans, clearances, etc. At least, that’s what the schedule says. I have a feeling we might do an extended review for our block test, and then we do part-tasking in the afternoon. Starting next week, we will move into full labs, doing multiple runs a day filling up the whole day.