That’s right folks, only 12 days left of my training here in OKC. This weekend is my last “lazy weekend” as I’m calling it.
Here’s the breakdown, in case you’ve been away for a while (or just joining me)...
Yesterday was a very easy problem in the labs. Much easier than 5-6, for sure. I believe this is because it was wind shift day! So exciting, starting on the west flow and moving into the east flow at the end of the problem (about half way through).
Spinning the airport around is usually more coordinated than...
I’ll have to admit, this placement and hiring stuff with the FAA changes so much, I will give the disclaimer that this is mostly uncharted territory in terms of proven methods as far as how all this works.
At any rate, here’s the down-low on how our placement is (supposed) to go down. Sometime late this week or early the next week we will receive a list of 38 openings throughout the federal system we could...
Well, unless something drastic changes, my cushy schedule of 3:30 pm – midnight will come to an end this evening. I’m very bummed out, because this means we’re back to mornings. But, on the positive side, it means we have less than two weeks left until we’ll know the outcome of this craziness.
Most of this past week has been spent just working on problems 3-6, and tonight will...
Last night we ran problem 3 in the TSS. The reason I’ve referred to it as spin the airport is because we are using the opposite flow of the airport, not the usual we typically use. Airports typically have multiple runways which can be used in either direction depending on the winds. We practice using the “other” runways here at AAC for a few days just for familiarity purposes. Today will be the last day we use the 10s (as opposed to the 28s) except for...
Had a pretty slow weekend here in OKC. The hot is really getting to me, it’s outrageous. Saturday was a slow day, slept in and went grocery shopping. Despite spending a small fortune on food and groceries, I still didn’t feel like cooking much, so I also picked up some frozen microwave dinners to bring for dinners this week to class, since...
Okay, I don’t usually post or even write this stuff at 12:45 when I get home (and this may not get posted at that hour, but it’s still being written) but tonight was an interesting night and I wanted to write it with some emotion left in me, and I’m WAY too fired up to go to bed and actually fall asleep right now anyhow.
Here goes: Tonight was problem 2 in...
Last night we started our final stage of training – problem 1 of 13 total problems to be run in the TSS labs. Each night we have 7 runs on the problem – but we run different variations of the problem and on different positions, rotating between A/B/C versions of the problem and switching between Local/Ground/Monitor...
Last night was IFR (instrument flight rules) night. At first I was kinda confused why we were doing a night on this, but once we started doing it, it made sense. We were learning the IFR rules so that we can apply those rules even in the VFR (clear day) conditions, since IFR flights always abide by those rules.
We only did two problems last night, but we did three runs of each so that...
So first I’ll rewind to Monday since the webservers still weren’t entirely up on Monday and I was way too busy to post anything anyways. It was the last day of tabletop labs (thank goodness!) and I couldn’t be happier. Last day of tabletops/3D was alright, I had some pretty good runs and even had an instructor who didn’t believe that my background was “only” a four year degree...
3D labs are interesting, with different complexity of problems throughout the day it seems. One run the problem seems hard, and the next run, it’s easy, but both are a “4” problem. I hope this isn’t any indication of how the PA problems (performance assessment problems) will be for our final evals. Several times I ran a problem as the local/tower controller and then sat and ran the ground, and the local next to me had a way easier or harder or easier problem than I had...
Today was the second full day of real labs that lasted all day. It was pretty fun, and the day went by really fast.
Until next Tuesday we are in tabletop labs/3D labs (see previous blogs for explanations) and I start and end each day as a “plane carrier” in the tabletop...
Woohoo! Today we started labs! I’m so thankful to be out of lectures (though our instructors did a good job of prepping us for labs). For the next week, we will be in what is called tabletop labs (which also includes the 3D labs).
I’ll explain this more...tabletop labs occur in a classroom where we have a scaled table cut out with our runways and taxiways on it...