TSEW: Week 2 - continued

Written: January 8 - 9, 2020
Published: October 2021

January 8

One of the major differences between RTF and TSEW is the segmented airspace. In RTF there are two sectors, north and south. Both sectors work satellites, feeder, and final functions in their respective airspace. In TSEW, we run departures, feeders/arrivals, final(s), and satellites as their own sectors. So far, we’ve worked primarily on finals (or finals + feeder combined, aka same person working both positions).

Today we started working on the feeder position. Feeder is the position that “feeds” airplanes to the final control, hence the name feeder. The problems, like usual, started off pretty slow. In hindsight, I felt like it kind of screwed me up because they were so easy and really wasn’t anything to do, so I wasn’t counting what they wanted me to, and once the problems got busier, I was way off on what I was supposed to be counting because I hadn’t done it in the slower problems.

I was willing to sit out of the pro-run tonight, but there were a lot of people claiming fatigue and one that said he was “dizzy” so I ran my third pro-run. Pro runs are different problems than during the day, since it’s a single-sector arrival-only problem. Killed it! Landed 18 in 30 minutes with 1 sep error (it was a minor one, 2.4x something at the threshold on reduced-runway-sep, where 2.5 was needed, so overall, I was pretty happy with the run).

January 9

Today we continued to work on feeder problems while with the instructors (6 runs today). I felt significantly less confident in my feeder problems today than yesterday. Not because they were busier (they were), but because on the first day I hadn’t been “counting” the way they wanted, so today I really was just winging/BS’ing my way through it instead of using the methods they had tried to teach us.

Since the feeder problem runs are also run with a final position decombined/open, one person runs final and one runs feeder. My final positions today were alright, I was told I did a “good job,” but I had some seriously hands-on instructors from the get go so I didn’t feel like it did it “without bumpers.”

Hopefully tomorrow will go better. I also didn’t do a pro-run today because I had run the last 3 nights and hadn’t sat out, and we are *supposed* to be rotating on monitor/sit out runs (though that isn’t happening with some people).

This weekend there is a pool/laundry party at one of the classmates hotels, and probably eating/drinking and movie watching. One more day left in the week!


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