September Updates - Part 1
Published: September 3, 2017
Here’s what has been going on in the world of ATC since I got back from RTF...
July: the rest of the month of July was spent getting current up in the tower (I needed to get 16 hours on position in a week). Getting back was a weird feeling, being away from my airspace and facility for a month. Although I didn’t forget how to work traffic, I was definitely a little rusty and needed to really pay attention and think about what I was doing for a little while. First couple transmissions were very cautious, to say the least.
Starting the next week, I’d jump into more classroom training, this time to learn my facility’s airspace, procedures, and our rules in the radar room (Tracon). The classroom portion of radar at my facility is only one day technically, but it’s followed by 20 simulator problems that take place on the extra radar scope in the Tracon, which takes about a week or so to accomplish at my facility.
During my classroom training, we went over our LOAs (letter of agreement) with the center facilities we coordinate with, other adjacent airspace control facilities, and the tower. We discussed radar rules, reiterating things we talked about at the academy, and some new things too.
Until we started the sims, I made a point to self-study a lot of things related to our local operation. One thing I focused on a lot was our approaches – since obviously none of this was covered at the academy and I hadn’t looked much at them, yet. The reason for self-studying before sims is that the simulated problems are pass-fail problems. You’re expected to work the same traffic you will eventually work in the field, on the floor, with live traffic, without errors, after only running a few sims at it. I’m not trying to sound bitter about the situation or structure – it’s actually pretty standard nationally, but I’ll explain more about how I feel about graded sims and training in a later blog.
After classroom, I spent the next week and a half plugging away at the simulated scenarios, as well as getting currency in the tower for August. We didn’t always have staffing to train on the simulations, so I’d use that time to get my currency upstairs in the tower (and make sure I didn’t forget how to say “cleared for takeoff”).
After (barely) successfully passing my graded simulated problems, it was time to start working live traffic!