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That's awesome. Also you're jumping on your checkout party much sooner than any of our recent certified guys. Some of them have been done for 2 months and still haven't thrown a party. We-will-never-forget.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:05
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NATCA issued a comment on the Biographical Questionnaire from the hiring announcement:quote:Biographical Questionnaire on Feb 10 Open Bid for ATCS In other recent news. Air Traffic Controllers at Austin Bergstrom International airport talked down a pilot who got stuck on top of clouds. quote:Cartwright did not have an instrument rating, meaning he was not certified to fly into an airport during bad weather or low visibility, FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 22:22
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Pope Mobile posted:I talked with the head of my ATC department today and he said that, within his rumor-mill, the FAA is looking at changing how certain questions are scored on the bio-q in order to get a larger pool of candidates. There will HAVE TO BE more hiring announcement forthcoming. They simply weeded out too many people this time. JohnClark posted:The one's I've seen are typically IFR vs. VFR, but I've seen a couple ugly IFR ones, related to both pilot and controller mistakes. It really is the last line of defense. Suffice to say, if TCAS saves the day, the controller, or the pilot, has made an egregious error. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Mar 4, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 23:52
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Finally, I can say I met someone who actually made it through the hiring announcement screen. He's enrolled in a CTI school, and also controls on VATSIM, how about that (flightsim goons who know me, know that I also control on VATSIM, because I have no life.) Don't worry, goons who applied, I'm thinking there will be several more opportunities going forward. Hopefully they let more people in on the next announcement.
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Mar 5, 2014 03:15
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We're both in the virtual Ft Worth Center. I pretty much always miss logging my minimum hours and they send me threatening emails, but I like to stay active to host sim nights for goons every now and then.
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Mar 6, 2014 13:15
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fordan posted:So how hard is it for ATC to recognize aircraft radar returns without a transponder? Malaysian Flight 370 is currently believed to have stopped transponding and did a U-turn, and I'm having a hard time understanding why it took this long to realize that it may have come back and over Malaysia in an area that reportedly has good radar coverage. They show up quite well on primary radar systems (thanks for reminding me I need to do a breakdown of those ASAP.) I wasn't clear from the news stories whether this particular aircraft was in radar contact with an ATC organization during the time of the crash though. The reports I read made it sound like it was making scheduled check-ins via radio, which is more in line with non-radar forms of control. I know they've found radar plots of the aircraft from places like flightradar24.com and other entities, but I wasn't sure that any of those sources were actually responsible for control of that aircraft. Either way, even with good radar coverage up high, it's likely that coverage disappears entirely at a certain altitude and below, especially over water. I've tried to keep up with the reports periodically, could you link any stories you find regarding the radar data used for that flight so far?
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Mar 11, 2014 21:04
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Great job! Keep up the good work.
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Mar 12, 2014 02:27
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Are they telling you to maintain visual separation? I'm not familiar with any rule that would require this unless they were trying to apply visual sep.
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Mar 15, 2014 04:53
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Yeah that's our keyboard/trackball layout. We don't edit route/flightplan information from those keyboards though, so the ABC configuration doesn't slow us down too badly. We don't do much actual typing on them, it's mostly single or double character commands followed by slew input from the trackball. The older keyboards I used before had a pressure sensitive, rubber nub slew device instead of a trackball, but the keyboard was almost identical (minus the top two rows of keys) The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Mar 16, 2014 |
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Mar 16, 2014 17:02
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xaarman posted:What do y'all think of civilians who fly formation? Military? No problems with the military usually. Separation standards are a little higher between the formation and other aircraft but it's not a big deal. I almost never deal with flight splits or join-ups though, they're already a formation when I get them. Sometimes the navy jet trainers here don't join up quickly on departure, and they'll delay their climbs and turns until they figure it out. If they're on an instrument flight plan, this causes us some distress if they drift into adjacent airspace or obstructions while they gently caress around trying to join up. Civilian formation flights aren't common where I work. Issues with them are lack of pilot proficiency, and the trailing aircraft keeping their transponders on, causing nuisance collision alarms with the lead aircraft. In standard formation flights, the lead aircraft is supposed to talk and use their transponder, the others should stay quiet and keep their transponders on standby or off.
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Mar 17, 2014 02:38
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Civilian pilots are able to make a formation as long as they have previously agreed to the arrangement: http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.111
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Mar 18, 2014 03:40
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Yeah it definitely wouldn't be MARSA.
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Mar 18, 2014 03:42
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xaarman posted:I don't think that's true. We've declared MARSA at random points across the US with controlling agencies nowhere near our home station. Per USAF regs, all we need are radar/radio contact, positive ID and altitude separation. quote:FAA Joint Order 7110.65: Sure seems like there should be some prior coordination with the ATC facility having jurisdiction. I wouldn't know what to do if two random navy trainers I was working suddenly said "I declare MARSA." We have no procedures in place for setting up MARSA. However: quote:b. ATC facilities do not invoke or deny MARSA. So we don't invoke or deny MARSA.... But I believe this still comes under subpara a. which says agreements should be in place first. For example, when Navy Jet Trainers are departing my airport, headed for their military operations area (located in adjacent Navy Approach Control airspace) sometimes they'll ask to go MARSA before I switch them over to the Navy approach guys. They're literally seconds away from the airspace boundary so I just tell them to standby and send them over to the Navy Approach Controller, who I'm assuming knows a lot more about how to set them up for MARSA than I do. I think pilots that ask us for this are jumping the gun, I'm sure the agreements exist between their squardrons and the navy approach control authority adjacent to us, and some individual pilots think they can get a head start on thing by asking our civilian controllers for MARSA so they can do it 30 seconds earlier. quote:So as I'm understanding it (FK can correct me...) ATC will absolutely not allow two civilian aircraft to merge as a formation on an IFR flight plan, even if they want (and are able) to, they will have to cancel IFR to do it? I don't think there's anything prohibiting ATC from allowing a civilian IFR flight. Flights are controlled as a single entity, with extra separation standards. We treat a flight like it's one aircraft, and just give them a little extra room. It wouldn't be MARSA, but references to formation flights in our book don't specifically reference military aircraft. quote:FAA Joint Order 7110.65: The last sub paragraph says it all. Military AND Civil formation flights in RVSM airspace. Reduced Vertical Separation Minima airspace (RVSM) exists between 29,000 and 41,000ft (FL290-FL410) and only IFR aircraft would be operating there, by regulation. Therefore, our book seems to allow handling of instrument, civil, formation flights, no problem. It would stand out to me, to see a formation flight filed with a civilian registry callsign, but the handling wouldn't change from how I handle military formation flights already. The flight plan information would show two aircraft for the aircraft type (ex: Instead of C172/G for a Cessna 172 with GPS, it would show 2/C172/G for a flight of two Cessna 172s).
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Mar 19, 2014 14:40
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fknlo posted:Whether or not we have an LOA with that unit or whatever never enters my mind. They ask for MARSA, they get it. Sounds like you probably do actually have the letters of agreement though, right?
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Mar 19, 2014 15:46
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simble posted:When you say next hit do you mean radar sweep? Which is how long? He does. For Centers it's about 12 seconds, for Approaches it's about 5 seconds. My facility works in a hybrid predictive mode called "FUSION" which updates the target's position every second, but since the altitude information comes from the transponder we still get that only ever 5 seconds when our antenna rotates back around and pings it again. For rapidly climbing, or descending aircraft (like Yenko's fighters) we'll often get "XXX" in the altitude readout for a few sweeps until the radar can get a reliable response from its transponder. So you'll see a climbing aircraft show (in hundreds of feet) 050, 060, XXX, XXX, 100, 125, XXX etc. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 21:03
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There's an order for that too: http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/0000.1G.pdf Use Caution: It's boring.
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Mar 20, 2014 00:31
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Well, I know that there is probably a huge different between an entire Center's worth of LOAs and my terminal facility experience. But I probably would have been one of those three guys. I'm the "book guy" at work because I can't work airplanes worth a poo poo you know.
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Mar 20, 2014 00:49
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Part time towers generate the new ATIS the next morning and use the letter after the one used before closing the night before. It's a rolling system. Unless the closure is longer than 12 hours. Then they start over at Alpha the next day. Also facilities will skip letters when they end up matching with adjacent facilities, just to prevent any possibility of confusion. EDIT for layman clarification. The ATIS is the Automated Terminal Information Service broadcast. It's a looped recording on a designated frequency at towered airports and provides weather, approach, runway, and airport information. It's recorded at least once every hour and each recording is assigned a single letter designation. ATC must ensure pilots have certain information before allowing them to depart or land. If the pilot states they have the most current ATIS letter code, ATC may omit information contained in the ATIS broadcast. This allows flight crews to obtain the information on their own and prevents ATC from having to issue basic information to every single airplane on frequency. Ex: "Approach, Southwest 530 level 5000 ft information Alpha" Assuming information Alpha is the current ATIS broadcast for Southwest 530's departure/destination airport, the controller need not verbally inform them of the weather, approach, or airport conditions contained within that ATIS recording. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 07:59
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Butt Reactor posted:In other news has anyone heard anymore about off-the-street hiring? After the announcement closed, only a scant few were selected for entrance testing. This is the smallest test group I've seen selected out of an open announcement since I've been in the agency, I was shocked. Rumors abound of "reverse discrimination," among my coworkers, as the selections were almost totally based of responses to the Biographical Questionnaire. However, both people I know personally who were selected to advance are white males, so I think that's just more baseless whining from guys I work with whose kids applied. The ones selected to move forward (approx 2,000 applicants out of 28,000) are now scheduled to take the entrance exam called the AT-SAT sometimes in April or May. After the testing is complete, eligible folks will move on to background checks, medical screening, interview, and selection. My understanding is that, this time around, folks will first go to the ATC Academy in Oklahoma City, and will be placed in facilities based on their performance at the academy. If that's true, none of these folks will know where they're going until the very last minute. I was shocked as anyone that they selected so few people. I'm hoping there will be additional announcements coming soon, since part of the wider forum-appeal of this thread was supposed to be goons who applied. So far I haven't heard of any SA users who made it through the first screen, which bums me out. MrYenko posted:She wasn't, she called the approach and told them to shift all their turbojet departures to the DTA we normally only use for props, which runs under the main turbojet ATA. It would've worked, if all the jets wanted to go to their destinations at eight thousand feet. DTA = Departure Something Something ATA = Arrival Something Something And yes, supervisors are lovely at working airplanes LOL. Good thing they get paid more than we do and have more opportunity for career mobility. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 21:08
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It's still split between Terminal and En Route. So they'll know at least that much before attending the academy.
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Mar 26, 2014 03:33
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Cocoa Crispies posted:Departure Terminal Area & Arrival Terminal Area? Maybe. I wasn't JUST being flippant, I didn't find the terms with a Google search or in our contractions manual.
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Mar 26, 2014 05:28
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A fellow goon PM'd me with some questions about ATC in my area, I invited him to this thread as well and he said it'd be cool if I shared his questions since others might find it interesting:quote:Hey man I just had some general ATC questions I came up with while flying along, mind answering them? I think you said you worked for tower AND approach? I've worked at two tower/approach facilities so far in my career, and they both have different radar display systems. I first worked at Waco Regional Airport (KACT, Waco TX) and we had a display and interface system called "ARTS IIe" (Automated Radar Terminal System, pronounced "arts two ee"). It looks like this:  My current facility (KCRP Corpus Christi International, Corpus Christi TX) is on a system called STARS (Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System) and it looks like this:  The most obvious differences are the square screen and color display of the STARS sytem. The old ARTS scope really does have the sweep going round-and-round. The STARS display hides the sweep. The ARTS display is photo sensitive, so it has to be a really dark room or the presentation gets washed out. STARS is back lit and much easier to see when light is present in the room (we still keep the control room fairly dark anyway, to reduce glare). Our radio interface at CRP is called an ETVS (Enhanced Terminal Voice Switch) and looks like this:  The left most bank of buttons is where you select which frequencies you're going to receive and/or transmit on. Generally, when positions are combined up and we're working multiple frequencies, we will always broadcast and receive on all of them simultaneously. This means that sometimes pilots won't hear someone else talking on another frequency, and it can cause some irritating congestion if it's busy. You're probably familiar with what happens when two people try to transmit at once on the same frequency (it tones out and makes a loud squealing noise). Well, when we're working multiple frequencies, and two or more aircraft transmit on different ones, it all just comes in through our headset in a garbled mess. On a good day I can actually make out up to 3 airplanes simultaneously (yes this happens) and get back to each one in turn. Sometimes it's just too garbled to make out and I have to try and catch a portion of one aircraft's message so I can narrow down who to ask to "say again." Because, if you just say "say again" all 3 will call back at once. Combining and splitting control positions/frequencies is done on a staffing and workload permitting basis. Hopefully if you're working a bunch of frequencies at once it's because it's relatively slow and you shouldn't get too much frequency congestion. Sometimes it's unavoidable and you just have to work through it and try to maintain control of your frequencies. The middle column of the ETVS labeled G/G is for ground to ground communications. This is how we talk to the tower from downstairs and vice versa. Our line to the tower controller and the ground controller is called an "override" line. We hold the button down and we immediately patch in to that controller's headset. Some courtesy is exercised to make sure you're not interrupting them, because they can't really get rid of you as long as you have that button pressed down. Adjacent facility lines are called "shout lines." You press and hold the button down and say the name of the facility you're calling, then your facility ID, then the number of the line. That comes out through a speaker at the other facility's control position, and they have to press their corresponding button and hold it down to establish communications with you. These types of calls are easier to ignore until you have time to answer because the voice only comes through the external speaker until you actually answer the call, then the audio is routed through your headset. We also have dial lines that accept 2 or 3 digit codes and call out to other facilities. That's how we call Flight Service or Traffic Management. We also have an external line that can call out like a regular phone, but we rarely use it. Runways are depicted on our radar scope as thin lines. The length and orientation of the line matches with the length and orientation of the runway. Then, we have dashed lines extending outward from the runway centerlines to depict that runway's final approach course for whatever instrument approach serves it. Each dash and each blank space between the dashes represents 1 nautical mile of distance. This helps us space out aircraft the proper amount on approach. This is what our basic composite radar map looks like at Corpus:  On the scopes themselves the background is black, this was taken from a PDF file I had. You can see the "V" shaped runways of Corpus Christi International where I marked it with the red line. Then the dashed final approach lines extending outward away from the airport. The little circle about 8NM north northeast of CRP is the Corpus Christi VORTAC (radio based navigational aid), and it has a final depicted because there is a VOR approach to runway 18 that comes in at an angle. I did a write up of our working schedule in the thread already, my post is here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3608176#post425573775 quote:hey, feel free to share it. I'm going to share it with my squadron too if you don't mind. A bunch of us have had questions and no one has gotten a chance to go to the radar room (other than the radar box here at NGP) and this clears up a lot of it. The radar doesn't hold that kind of information. We keep track of route and altitude information via flight progress strips. We keep track of approach requests on them. At CRP the tower has a radar display and we coordinate climb out information by editing the aircrafts radar data block (the block of text associated with each aircraft's radar target). There are some fields we can change to indicate what runway the airplane is going to and what their climb out is. JohnClark posted an example earlier in this thread: JohnClark posted:
NGP tower does not have the ability to see our data blocks, we coordinate every single approach and climb out (departure instructions for training aircraft planning to go missed approach and not land) verbally through the shout line. It's a pain. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 29, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 18:16
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Whether you have to hold the button down or just press it once to activate is configurable by our tech ops staff for our ETVSs (the touch screen panels I posted about above). In fact, the override lines on our coordinator ETVS panels don't need to be held down. For the control positions themselves, the override and shout lines must be held, but the dial lines are push to toggle. Sometimes the line gets stuck on, so if you get into the habit of releasing the button then cursing the person you were just talking to, eventually you're gonna get an angry call back. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Mar 30, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 21:09
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Found this cool image depicting current approach control radar (TRACON) equipment in the US: (Click HERE for larger version) I explained STARS and ARTS IIe in my post above Blue areas are STARS facilities: Red areas are ARTS IIe facilities: Green areas are ARTS IIIe/CARTS (Common ARTS) facilities:  ARTS IIIe displays look a lot like STARS but some of the functionality is different in ways that I don't recall anymore. The FAA academy had both STARS and ARTS IIIe simulators when I went for radar training years ago, but I don't completely recall the differences. The map background and radar target presentation were very very similar, it was mostly differences in user interface I think. Note also the lack of physical settings knobs on either side of the ARTS IIIe display's frame. The same settings can be tweaked using a GUI in both the ARTS IIIe and STARS displays, but STARS also has physical knobs that I guess are supposed to mimic the old-timey analogue feel of the green, round, ARTS IIe radar scope. Both STARS and ARTS IIIe have user preference settings that can be saved and loaded by each controller, so you can set your brightness and color intensities to suit your tastes. The old round ARTS IIe scopes required manually twisting all those knobs to get the image exactly the way you wanted it, which may have generated the desire to retain physical controls when those facilities were switching over to STARS. Going back to the map image: Purple areas are Department of Defense STARS facilities. It's the same radar scope built by Raytheon but re-tooled for specific DoD integration. At Corpus Christi International (the blue spot in southernmost Texas), we border Kingsville Naval Air Station/Approach and their DoD STARS connects with ours just fine. This allows us to transfer some amount of aircraft information between each other automatically through the radar system instead of coordinating verbally. Not really sure what other practical differences there are, and I'm probably not allowed to know. The tiny blue dots seen in Southwest Montana and Northwest Colorado are STARS Lite. These are tiny flat panel LCD monitors that have a similar presentation to STARS, but the colors are a little different. These are used in small control towers and integrated with an overlying Center or Approach radar system for basic aircraft information transfer. I found a techno-babble PDF about them here. These displays are probably not used for actual separation of aircraft, only as an aid for the tower controller to visually acquire the aircraft and coordinate departure/arrival information with the overlying facility that actually has full function radar systems. The tiny red dots are ARTS Ie (already I'm thinking "man, that must mean it's even shittier than ARTS IIe..."). I'm not exactly sure what these are, but I think these are the tower versions of the old round ARTS IIe scopes pictured above. I'm not certain that's what it was called, but there's one in the tower at Waco, TX (image is the same model of display I'm thinking of, not of Waco Regional's tower itself):  I happen to know from experience that it IS a full featured radar display that can be used for separation and other normal radar services. I couldn't find any other information on it, but LOOK! I mentioned earlier that the ARTS IIe used an eraser nub style slew device instead of a trackball and there it is. Just above the bright red button off by itself to the right. Anyway, we'd use this display to work traffic late at night after we'd gone down to minimal staffing and the traffic was light. It's not an optimal display to work traffic from because it's small and the presentation isn't as clear. But it's a CRT TV-like display so it's bright enough to be usable in the daylight tower environment. The FAA's overall plan is to modernize all US Civilian TRACONs to a STARS like system by 2020. Their progress so far and future plan summary is outlined here. EDIT: Just a clarification on the already confusing mashup of radar technology. There is a difference between the radar tech being employed in the back room and at the radar antenna site, and the display technology being used to show it to the controller. I've been referring to the radar technology by name above in place of the names of the display screens themselves because it's just been how I've heard it referred to at my facilities. It'd be neat if we had any Tech Ops goons on the forums that could clear up anything I got horribly wrong or over simplified. Tech Ops are employed by the FAA to maintain all the equipment in the National Airspace System. Radar, Radios, aircraft navigational aids, runway and approach lighting, you name it. Some of those guys are pretty drat bright. Airport Surface Detection Equipment:  ASDE-X is a radar system that tracks aircraft movement on the surface of the airport, and airborne targets at a very very close range to the airport. It will detect aircraft both with or without transponders, and provide tower controllers a bird's eye view of the airport surface and all things moving on it. Additionally, there are safety logic systems built into the ASDE-X that will warn of an impending conflict between aircraft operating on or near the runways. Without this system, tower controllers rely entirely on their eyeballs to work aircraft on the airport surface itself. ASDE-X allows controllers to continue a fairly normal ground operation even when visibility from the tower is 0. Normally, aircraft that are observed on terminal radar systems are not visible to controllers on the radar screens until they're at least a hundred feet off the ground (for departures), or they drop off the radar screen when very close to the airport (for arrivals). This happens even when the terminal radar antenna is located right at the airport! This is not because the antenna CAN'T see these airplanes, mind you, but because software filters eventually exclude those airplanes to keep other ground clutter from obstructing the radar presentation, like highway vehicle traffic, trees, buildings, etc. ASDE-X continues this radar coverage all the way to the surface, enhancing situational awareness. The controller's utilize ASDE-X from a different display than the tower's main approach radar displays:  ASDE-X fuses radar input from a variety of sources. Primarily, the ASDE-X has its own antenna located at the top of the control tower. It usually looks like a white spinning disc or some sort of nautical antenna. It may be encapsulated by a radome that prevents you from seeing its movement:  It also takes input from the terminal radar antenna, nearby ADSB (a newer type of transponder based surveillance) antennas, and multilateration antennas, which are located on the airport and provide triangulation support for the main ASDE antenna:  A very small image of a multilateration antenna These systems are present at the largest airports in the U.S. I've never worked at an airport that has one. The ASDE-X significantly improves ground operation efficiency and situational awareness. Additionally, the safety logic system built into it allows application of some ATC rules that are otherwise unavailable to controllers working without the system (the rules are too boring to explain unless you really really wanna know). The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2014 01:13
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Bob A Feet posted:Are you constantly reviewing NOTAMs in your airspace or do you just tower call to see? I asked for a LOC BC in HRL the other day and one of you guys knew right away that the runway was closed and the tower probably wouldn't allowed it but somehow you were able to negotiate to get us a circle to land there (thanks for that, I needed the approach). We review the Notices to Airmen daily in the morning for all airports under our control. We rely on Flight Service, or the towers of affected airports to call us for pertinent closures/notices that happen later on that same day. Big stuff is usually coordinated through us in advance by multiple sources. The towers might call the approach control position, the tower supervisor or airport manager might call our managers on the telephone, the FAA regional office or Flight Service might send us a fax. Either way, we usually get the information. quote:How do you divy up the frequencies? I think Corpus approach has three (I have to reference the freqs each time cause we're mostly on UHF but button 6/8/12) I have a hunch its one for arrivals at CRP, one for arrivals at NGP, and one other? Corpus Approach is split up a lot more than you think. Valley Approach is easier to explain so I'll start there. Valley Approach sectors are Valley West, North, and East. They're almost always combined to one position. Valley Approach combined works 3 VHF frequencies and 3 UHF frequencies, and also monitors 3 clearance delivery frequencies for our untowered airports at Weslaco and Port Isabel TX. All Valley frequencies are used because the area is large enough that you can't have an aircraft on Valley West frequency over at Brownsville Airport (far East end of our airspace) doing approaches and still be able to hear them, so we must make sure aircraft are on the right frequency for their arrival airport or we risk losing them at low level (probably while they're pointed at the Mexican border waiting for a turn toward the runway at either McAllen or Brownsville airports). Corpus Approach has a complicated sector set up to accommodate Navy Trainer traffic from NGP-Navy Corpus Airport/Truax Field. The simpler side, configuration wise, is the one handling CRP-Corpus International Airport and other smaller fields nearby. That is almost always worked by one controller but it can be split into Corpus North, South, and West. 2 VHF frequencies, 3 UHF frequencies, and 1 Clearance Delivery frequency for RKP-Rockport Aransas Country Airport. The East side of Corpus Approach, that handles the NGP-Navy Corpus radar pattern, and the VFR (Visual Flight Rules) practice areas for the NGP Training Wing 4 aircraft.... That's a cluster of frequencies and positions. There's Corpus Low East, High East, Mustang, and Recovery. Back in the day, all would be split up quite frequently and worked by separate controllers. Now, it's mostly worked combined to one guy during the week, or completely combined up with Corpus N, S, W at night or on the weekend. That side in its entirety has 4 VHF frequencies, 6 UHF Frequencies, and 1 Clearance Delivery frequency for NGP-Navy Corpus when their tower is closed. This is the side where frequency congestion gets a little crazy if we don't have it split up enough. All of the Corpus Approach side sectors call themselves "Corpus Approach." All of the Valley Approach sectors call themselves "Valley Approach" even though we're all the same group of controllers and working in the same room. quote:How do you do freq switches? I know the other controllers in the sector are sitting next to you, but for tower and center switches-- someone told me there is a way to positively switch us? Most of the time, our radar allows us to automatically pass the aircraft's identification to adjacent facilities using a "hand off" function. We push a simple command on our keyboard and "click" on the aircraft and it begins flashing on the receiving controllers radar display. They click the flashing aircraft to accept the hand off and then we see our own display flash back. We then know they have accepted the radar hand off of that target and we tell the pilot to switch to the new controller's frequency. It's the same process between our own sectors. The receiving controller already has flight plan information on the aircraft from whatever flight plan system their facility uses, so they know to expect someone flashing at them from a certain direction. If the automated hand off function in the radar system fails, we have to call the adjacent controller on the shout line and perform a verbal hand off, where we tell them exactly where the aircraft is reference to a common geographical point depicted on both our radar displays (like an airway intersection, airport, or prominent landmark) and they accept the hand off by saying the words "radar contact." Almost always, the automated system works. Verbal hand offs are only required for weirdo glitches in our flight plan computer, or for aircraft operating without a transponder (the radars rely heavily on transponder replies to coordinate the location of an incoming aircraft with it's expected location and make sure the flight plan info is matching up with the right aircraft radar target). When you first show up at any facility to begin training, one of the first things you have to do is memorize all the frequencies within your facility as well as the ones at adjacent facilities (towers, center sectors, other approaches) that you hand off to. It's a lot of numbers to remember. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 11:13
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Bob A Feet posted:Yo man, this is great info. I've been sharing a lot of this with my squadron buddies. None of us ever got the standard tower/ATC tour and at least for me, I always wonder at the systems/practices at play. Was this at night on a Friday or a weekend? When Navy Corpus Tower closes, it's 1 in 1 out instrument operations with few exceptions. On Friday the tower will close without regard to how many navy trainers are still up in the air. The past few weeks they've closed while we've had 7-9 airplanes in the immediate area, plus several expected to return from their cross country flights. In this situation, all we can do is hold people and let them in one at a time. We try to time it as close as possible so the next plane begins their final approach as soon as the first one cancels their flight plan or otherwise makes a missed approach. Holding can also be forced on pilots that want longer, full procedure instrument approaches, when there are 10 other airplanes asking for quicker straight-in approaches. Though I'm guessing your recent situation probably was due to tower closure and not traffic congestion specifically. We still try to fit in those full procedure requests as quickly as possible. When the tower is open, we can put you guys much closer together and let you proceed into the airport more efficiently, since your flight plan cancels on landing at a towered airport, or the tower calls us when you execute a missed approach. When the tower is closed, the preceeding arrival pilot has to call us and cancel their instrument flight plan or go missed approach and we see them again on the radar, before the next aircraft can be cleared for the approach. It slows things down considerably, it's not something we like to be doing when there are a bunch of airplanes trying to get into Navy Corpus, but we do not control the Navy Tower's schedule.
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Mar 31, 2014 15:48
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Zochness posted:The National Air Traffic Controllers Association just held the annual Communicating for Safety conference this week which means another round of Archie League Medal of Safety Awards. These are given to a controller or controllers from each of the 9 regions in the US for life saving actions. Gives me a lot of pride in doing this job and it's awesome to see how well all these situations were handled. The awards for 2014 are listed here https://www.natca.org/archie_league_awards.aspx and most have both audio and visual replays. I just read a news article about this incident and enjoyed the extra perspective from the controller. He was pretty shaken up by it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHUKkyfXGNE Portland Press Herald posted:“When they get below 300 feet, from our line of sight they’re below the horizon and there’s a whole backdrop of lights – there’s the cruise ship terminal, ships in the harbor, of course the airport lighting itself,” DiMillo said. “Picking out an aircraft like that with one little tiny light on its nose is very difficult, as opposed to airliners with a huge array of lights that you can see 10 miles away.” Ground radar, aka ASDE-X was invaluable in being able to determine the aircraft's orientation against an array of city and harbor lights.
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Apr 2, 2014 07:21
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Any of you current controllers want to come to Corpus Christi? JohnClark? You look like you could use a break? https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/366485500
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Apr 8, 2014 11:30
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Twenty In Trail - A requirement to have airplanes with a common destination at least 20 miles separated longitudinally. Normally this would be 5 miles in nominal traffic conditions, so this is a big slow down to try and keep people from having to hold when airborne. Altitude Caps - An altitude restriction probably much lower than what aircraft would normally want to climb to for their cruise to that airport. This keep the airplanes slower (the lower you are, the thicker the air, the slow you go, generally) and also frees up the higher altitudes for normal traffic NOT destined to the special event airport. PBI is West Balm Beach airport, Florida. Three and Increasing - 3 miles and increasing. The West Palm Beach and Miami Approach controls were showing their disinterest in the traffic issues facing Augusta/Atlanta by giving MrYenko planes separated by as little as 3 miles when the requested interval was 20 miles. "Mostly" is partially a joke, since less than 3 miles would be a simple loss of separation in most areas, so if they were handing planes over with less than 3 it was really a tight squeeze and maybe not legal.
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Apr 12, 2014 18:54
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E4C85D38 posted:In that case, would you try to increase seperation somehow (I assume having the trailing plane do a few circles), or just deal with it in some other manner? In the approach environment at least, the quickest way to affect separation when you've lost it or nearly lost it is to issue a combination of turns and altitude adjustments to get it back. Speed control can also be used but it takes a lot longer to get anything out of it. There's a considerable lag in the assignment of a speed instruction and the pilot's compliance, plus speed differences still take several minutes to result in extra miles.
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Apr 12, 2014 20:10
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MrYenko posted:(Also also: when I say MIA and PBI, I'm referring more to the respective approach controls, and less the individual airports. TPA, RSW, MIA, PBI, all use their airport ID for their approaches. Orlando has F11. I dunno why.) Because MIA, PBI, TPA, and RSW are Towers that are combined with their Approach Controls (same controllers working in the Tower and Approach). F11, Orlando Approach is a separate facility, with separate controllers, than MCO - Orlando International Tower. Generally, the stand-alone TRACONs receive Letter-Number designations. F11, D10, A80, C90 etc. Exceptions include Northern California and Southern California which get NCT and SCT respectively, and Potomac TRACON (PCT), dunno why they're special. http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/air_traffic_services/tracon/ The combined Tower/TRACON facilities are often referred to as Up/Down facilities, because the same controllers both work Up, in the tower, and Down(stairs), in the radar room. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Apr 13, 2014 |
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Apr 13, 2014 04:55
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Cocoa Crispies posted:Are any of these maps like your work maps: http://skyvector.com/?ll=25.943850165864013,-80.26284397636161&chart=470&zoom=3 ? They're even more cryptic. I posted a bit about terminal radar systems here. Included is a screen shot of an approach radar map (the black on white image). It lacks much of the numbers and annotations because we memorize all the symbols and lines for our area of jurisdiction.
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Apr 13, 2014 16:35
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The Slaughter posted:I don't understand how you can not want to shoot yourself in the head while being in an underground building 8 hours a day in a dark room staring at a computer screen doing a stressful job. As opposed to how I spend the rest of my home life? (sitting in a dark room staring at a screen playing video games).
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Apr 13, 2014 21:18
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The Slaughter posted:That makes it even more depressing. Ugh. Well I feel fine, you're the one that hates flying. MrYenko posted:Not my facility. (I think that's ZLC.) We keep it pretty dark in my TRACON as well, even though the displays could handle some lower level lighting without too much problem with glare. A brightly lit room would be annoying though, the screens are too reflective and the glare would be annoying. At my old facility with the green/sweepy radar display, a lit room would be impossible to work in, the image washes out completely with even moderate amounts of light.
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Apr 13, 2014 21:57
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The Slaughter posted:KFAT-KPHX-KFAT-KPHX-KFAT Ok, so funny story, and I feel a little bad about this because he's the nicest loving guy and he's headed to much busier pastures so I expect he's become a decent controller... But, one of my classmates during my first visit to the Academy was placed at FAT (Fresno Tower/TRACON, Fresno California). I come in on the first day and we all take our seats next to our name/facility paper placards. We each step up to the front of the class and introduce ourselves, so you can get a good look at everyone's facility/name sitting in front of them on the table. There sat "First Name, Last Name, FAT." He was like 350lbs easily. Probably more.
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Apr 13, 2014 23:04
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Can't imagine they're that sensitive. All they have are the minimum vectoring/en route altitudes and the airspace boundaries. Other than that they're typical low/high altitude charts.
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Apr 13, 2014 23:31
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That's what's so silly, a FOIA will get almost anything interesting out of the FAA. Radar/Voice replays, maps, charts, SOPs, letters. You just have to wait for the request to be fulfilled and possibly pay a nominal fee. The more diligent hobbyists I know on VATSIM have submitted FOIA requests in the past for sector map information to better simulate ATC, and have received them on CDs free of charge.
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Apr 13, 2014 23:35
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When you certify at a Tower/TRACON facility you also realize in short order that all of your time will be spent working in the dark, while trainees get the tower time. I spend about 90% of my time down, vs. up.
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Apr 14, 2014 00:20
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That's probably to combat the usual effect of Up/Down (combined Tower/TRACON facilities) staffing shortages. Which is, usually people certify in the tower first and then take FOREVER to certify in the radar room, assuming they don't wash out (and many do, on radar). So they're probably trying to combat that by getting the painful part over with first. If you certify on radar at Miami, there's no way you're going to wash out in the tower unless you're a special breed of super radar/stupid tower controller... I mean, it could happen, but it's a pretty big step backwards in complexity. It's better than spending 2 years certifying a new guy in the tower, just to find out a year into radar training that they're not capable and now they have to go somewhere else/get fired. Plus, due to the staffing crisis, trainees that are certified on even one position in the entire facility are often counted as full employees for staffing purposes. They spend their entire work day assigned to the 1 position they're qualified on because it's needed, instead of getting quality training time on the positions they have yet to complete. Long story short, the staffing issue and the training environment in the FAA currently is untenable. The Ferret King fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 00:32
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:13 |
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We're not special enough to need departure procedures where I work. In fact the other place I work didn't have them either. I expect I'll have to learn to deal with it later in my career if I go somewhere busy.
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Apr 14, 2014 10:50
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