Ask Me About Air Traffic Control. You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask Me About Air Traffic Control. You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

DNova posted:

I would appreciate if one of you would post a more calm screenshot of whatever you look at all the time with a little bit of explanation.

Sure thing. I work at a facility called Potomac Consolidated TRACON, or PCT. We're split into 4 areas which each cover a major airport: Washington Dulles (IAD, the area I work in), Washington National (DCA, never called Reagan), Baltimore-Washington (BWI), and Richmond (RIC).

The ops room at the facility looks like this (although the lights are always off):

Controllers sit in front of the scopes on the outer wall, and the inner positions are staffed by traffic management, the operations manager and the SOC (our maintenance guys).

This is the best image I could find for the sort of radar scope we use, sorry that it's so blurry:

Most of this is about what you'd expect, circles represent airports, crosses are typically fixes of one sort or another, and the solid lines are usually airspace boundaries.
The yellow arrow points to an aircraft. The data black is made up of 2 lines, the top one is the aircraft's callsign, in this case JZA7914 (JZA stands for Jazz, a Canadian regional airline). The lower line is split into two parts, the first showing the aircraft's altitude in hundreds of feet (059, or 5900 feet above mean sea level). The second spot shows the aircraft type, CRJ1 (Canadair Regional Jet 100 series). The altitude portion will also timeshare with the scratchpad, which is 3 characters long and input by the controller. A typical scratchpad at Dulles would be something like 01C, indicating that the aircraft will land on runway 1 center. The aircraft type portion will timeshare with the aircraft's ground speed (which is distinct from its airspeed).
The red arrows point to three airspace definitions, which represent different rings of class bravo airspace. Without getting in depth, class bravo airspace surrounds busy airports in order to keep little guys away from big jets, and it looks like an upside down wedding cake. So, the inner ring extends from the surface to 7000 feet, the next ring from 3000 - 7000, and the outer ring from 4000 - 7000.

I found a cool shot of some of the newer tools we have for separating aircraft:

These targets are aircraft lined up on final. The datablocks show their callsigns on the top line (these are test targets so they just numbered them in order), their altitude in hundreds of feet followed by their ground speed in tens of knots on the second line, and their distance from the aircraft ahead in nautical miles on the third line. The triangles extended out from the front of the targets are each 3 nautical miles long. The first is blue because everything's looking good, no problem with separation. The second one is yellow which indicates that separation will be lost eventually, but not straight away. The third one is red because separation is going to be lost imminently or already has been lost.

Lastly, since MrYenko showed you his cool URET business for handling flight plans, here's what we use:

These are printed by printers I have never seen anywhere else, I believe the FAA keeps that company in business single-handedly. Still, antiquated though they are, flight strips contain a ton of useful information. Going from top to bottom and left to right on the uppermost strip, it has the callsign, aircraft type, and computer ID. It then has the transponder code, proposed departure time, and requested altitude. It then has the departure airport and the route of flight.

quote:

How does the pension work... forced retirement at 56 (25 years if you are 31 upon entering) but only 1.5% per year, so you'd get 37.5% of your salary in retirement? I don't know anything about pensions.

Because controllers retire early, the calculation is slightly different than it is for other federal employees (though we're still part of the same system, called FERS). For controllers you get 1.7% of the average of your highest 3 years of salary for the first 20 years of service, and then another 1% for every year after 20. So, if you retired after 25 years of service, you're pension would be worth 39% of the average of your high 3. To close that out, let's assume the average of your high 3 was 100,000/year. In that case, your pension would be $39,000/year.

JohnClark fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Feb 13, 2014

# ¿ Feb 13, 2014 01:08

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:03

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

The Slaughter posted:

I remember somebody here, maybe it was awseft, doing some RJ flight at 8000 or 10,000 but I think it was due to a broken pack or something that restricted their alt.

We get those ever now and then through our airspace at Potomac, I think they're usually just a one way trip so they can get the repairs done. It's very strange though, the routes are that altitude are typically occupied by cessnas and cherokees, and then a CRJ or an E145 comes bombing down at 10,000.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 20:20

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

The Ferret King posted:

What routes? North Atlantic Tracks (NATs)?

ARs are Atlantic routes, we use them most commonly at our place for guys headed down to Florida. They're restricted to aircraft with the proper equipment though (life rafts and so forth) and they often get shutdown when there are rocket launches from the Cape, especially when the space shuttle was still flying.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2014 12:18

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Zochness posted:

So after almost a year as CPC I'm finally getting sent to OJTI class (a class to learn how to train new controllers on live traffic). Any of you guys who train enjoy it/hate it? I've got a tower only CPC-IT (already certified at another facility, transferred here and in training) on my crew who I'm going to have to train on radar, so I'll get thrown into it pretty much right away. I enjoy teaching people so I hope that helps, we do a lot of training.

I train a lot and I enjoy it, but there are definitely pitfalls. Trainees have a tendency to "regress to the mean", that is that even the best trainees will often fall back at some point during their course and this can be difficult for both the trainee and the trainer. The best way I've found to handle that is when you feel yourself getting frustrated because they keep making the same mistake over and over, take a couple days off from training. Talk with the trainee and your supe, tell them that you'd like to take a little break and work on your own for a bit. Hopefully you'll have some good sessions on your own and you'll be ready to take your trainee back on before you know it.

As others mentioned, don't berate the trainee for no reason, it's way to easy to wreck someone's confidence that way. My dad was an ER doc and he worked with a guy who everyone called Nervous Gerdes. This dude was a superstar, knew medicine like the back of his hand, but someone early on in his career had convinced him he wasn't any good and so he ordered a zillion tests and over-analyzed everything. Trainees need to be held to a standard, and if they've failed to live up to their end (learning the basics of airspace and so forth) then you need to be firm with them, but just yelling for yelling's sake is counter-productive.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2014 20:24

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

Pretty sure the bio questionnaire had nothing to do with experience, it's looking for personality types that have a history of being good controllers. A friend's sister got past it. Said friend is also a controller.

I really hope it's not that, because almost all of those have all the evidentiary basis of voodoo. They predict who will be successful and who won't be about as well as a flip of the coin. And, although it's admittedly a small sample, looking around my facility there are a huge number of different personality types. The idea that you could possibly create a 20 question tool to assess who's the "right" sort of person to be a controller is laughable on its face.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2014 00:18

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

E4C85D38 posted:

In the spirit of being pointlessly nosy, have any of you had or seen a TCAS RA go off?

I read on Wikipedia that under Mode S or ADS-B coverage, you can automatically see a TCAS RA when it happens, but that's not exactly sourced nor is it terribly specific whether that's something that happens now or if it's on the big list of NextGen stuff to cram into towers/centers.

I've seen numerous TCAS RAs since I've been working, and been involved in a few myself. We don't get any alert that they're happening on our equipment, so it's up to the pilot to report to use what's going on and then us to pick up the pieces.

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.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 23:48

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Tommy 2.0 posted:

That thing is the loving devil. I absolutely loathe it more than any piece of "tech" I've ever had to use. Alphabetical order keyboard? For fucks sake. I can't even contain my language when I look at it and reminisce using that archaic poo poo board.

One of our guys was involved in the initial development of STARS (Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System), which inexplicably stuck with those goddamn ARTS keypacks. I asked him why, and he said the old guys at the time (STARS was first developed in the early 90s) didn't know how to type and so didn't want to transition to a QWERTY keyboard, despite the huge advantages that could be realized.

Oh, and they also demanded that our radar scopes have knobs, despite the fact that you can manipulate every setting through the GUI.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2014 18:11

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

xaarman posted:

So... we can do identical procedures... we just can't call it MARSA... that seems dumb.

Not really. MARSA is specifically for IFR operations and requires specific letters of agreement between the controlling facility and the military unit that will be utilizing it. Additionally, as far as I know it's almost always conducted in special use airspace or ATCAA (air-traffic control assigned airspace), not just wherever someone wants to do it. As an example at my place, we have an ATCAA called guard dog that the Air Force uses when they fly a CAP (combat air patrol) over DC. They're usually VFR when they're up there but they occasionally go IFR and will then invoke MARSA when they conduct aerial refueling.

VFR operations are handled differently as was discussed. I'm not aware of any agreements allowing for civilian IFR formation flying withing the US, but someone please let me know if there's somewhere out there where it's being done.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 02:06

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

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.

I can dig that, I don't work in the enroute environment so that's not something I'd experience day to day.

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?

Absolutely not? I'm not sure I'd go that far. But barring some manner of coordination ahead of time, if two IFR pilots told me they wanted to fly in formation IFR, one would need to get the other in sight and provide visual separation. However, that only works within my facility, our LOAs with Washington, Cleveland, and New York centers don't allow us to transfer aircraft to them who are maintaining visual separation, so there's no way I could give them two IFR aircraft in formation with one another.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2014 06:48

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

The Ferret King posted:

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

I'm so addicted to leaving PCT I've got an RSS feed from usajobs

But believe it or not I have a release date to ORD tower, December 14th is my last day at Potomac! I bid on an FLM job at MSN as well, we'll see how that goes.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 15:28

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Tommy 2.0 posted:

I hope you love doing ground.

Never done tower, but I can't wait to learn. I got to visit ORD a couple years ago and it was amazing, if intimidating for a radar-only guy like me.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 15:49

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

MrYenko posted:

Bonus: when looking for a picture of ERIDS, I finally found a decent shot of a couple of HOST consoles:

Look at you, with your lights on and everything.

:smith:

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 19:52

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

That's how it's supposed to be done...

Depending on the person you're relieving, it can take as little as 3 seconds. "You're talking to the highlighted ones". Unplugs and walks away.

The NTSB reviewed an incident we had not long ago, and found some pretty awful recordings of relief briefings. Our QA folks made up a video of 6 briefings, from best to worst, and the worst one was literally, word-for-word, "So you're <sector>, blah blah blah, <initials>." There isn't a :ughh:

big enough to simulate to look on people's faces when they heard that.

Since then we've redesigned the relief briefing checklist and I think we're doing better with it now, but there are still a few holdouts who just refuse to deliver an adequate briefing.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2014 14:08

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

The Ferret King posted:

I did a transfer request blast like that about a year ago now. I hope you have better luck. Mobility in the agency is low right now. A lot of people become supervisors just to get the opportunity to transfer. I'm hoping it won't take much longer for me to get picked up somewhere I want to go.

Speaking of that, I just did it. Got called last week Thursday, after over 5 years of trying to get there I'm headed to MSN as a supe! Can't wait to be back home in Wisconsin again.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2014 01:30

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Bob A Feet posted:

What kind of weather overlay, if any, do you have on your radar displays? I've flown in planes that are weather radar inop and always just asked center/approach if that cloud ahead of me is too bad to fly into and I can usually get a good answer.

In the terminal world our weather data is derived from the ASR (airport surveillance radar) itself. So the rotating orange dish at Dulles that tracks aircraft also generates the weather information that we receive. It's displayed to us in 6 levels, which are in turn described to pilots as "Light" (level 1) "Moderate" (level 2) "Heavy" (levels 3 and 4) or "Extreme" (levels 5 and 6) precipitation.

In addition to that, at least at Potomac we have access to a nifty tool from MIT called ITWS (Integrated Terminal Weather System). It displays a bunch of weather data as well as forecasting an hour ahead in ten minute increments. Some of the additional data you get include gust fronts, microburts/wind shear, possible tornadoes, wind speed and direction around the terminal area, lightning information, and so forth.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2014 16:51

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

They haven't re-banned it out at Potomac, they just made it so you have to get a procedure written into the LOA, which we've done with all of our towers.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 17:34

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Sinbad's Sex Tape posted:

A dude from my high school friended me on facebook while I was still a trainee and his profile said he was a controller at my center. I'd been there long enough to have an idea of who most controllers were and was pretty sure he wasn't one. I poked around and found out he was just one of those interns that draws maps all day or whatever they allow them to do.

He was just in CTI school and I would check on his status periodically to see where he was at in the hiring process. So he finally gets in to the academy in May and is just updating his facebook about rocking the map test and whatever like weekly. A few weeks ago I realized I hadn't seen him hanging around with the other new trainees. He didn't pass the academy.

Dude spent 4 years in school, went to the academy with people he already knew, knew people at his facility, and had access to most of the material beforehand and still couldn't pass. What are they teaching at these schools?

It's really quite variable. I went to Purdue for CTI, and thankfully they have a fantastic aviation program generally along with a professor who is an ex-controller to run the ATC portion, I learned a great deal while going to school there. I have coworkers who went to other schools though who said that their specific ATC education in college amounted to basically nothing.

The CTI program wasn't a terrible idea in itself, the trouble is that the FAA exercised essentially no oversight of the schools it anointed . It also lied to the students, telling them if they got this degree they would be hired, and then pulling the rug out from under them, which coupled with their poor oversight meant a lot of young adults having paid a lot of money for a largely worthless degree.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2014 13:18

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Zochness posted:

Oh hey fellow Boilermaker, what year did you graduate? I definitely appreciated how straight forward they were with us there, I was prepared for the year and a half wait after graduating and knew nothing was guaranteed. Also how they didn't offer an ATC specific degree because hiring could dry up, at least having Aviation Management on the degree and taking some business classes gives you options if ATC doesn't work out.

2007, I actually transferred there from Minnesota after...misspending my first couple college years. How about you? And you're absolutely right, the fact that we got either the mechanic, pilot or management degree in addition to the CTI cert was excellent.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 01:08

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

hobbesmaster posted:

Your sense of scale is completely off in the air, nice legal if minimum separations can look like you're able to touch the other plane. The wingspan of a 747 is 200 feet.

To add to this, I was in the cockpit of a 757 a few years ago and a C-17 passed overhead by 1000 ft, going the opposite direction on the same airway. Until just before he passed out of sight it looked for all the world like we were going to collide; it's really hard to tell how far apart you are given the sizes and speeds involved.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2014 05:12

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Spacewolf posted:

I can probably guess the answer, but how do they ensure the things don't deviate from flight plans? I'm presuming we don't have fighters flying alongside them ready to shoot them down if they look funny.

I've worked a couple of them, and they're basically allowed unfettered access to anywhere in the US, including restricted and prohibited areas. The only time we're allowed to deny requests that they make is for the safety of flight, either because of conflicting air traffic or because a restricted area presents a hazard to aircraft (ie an active gunnery range). Even in those cases, we made every effort to arrange access for them so that they could take pictures of whatever they like and make sure we're not developing some comical super weapon.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2015 19:44

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

Did no one consider the thing where maybe the person who designed the test was smart and set it up to weed out "picking the "obvious" answer" instead of answering truthfully? There's generally a lot of research and whatever that goes into that stuff. Not saying the BQ is good or anything, but I've seen a lot of people talking about that in regards to how they answered.

This is one of the fundamental problems with these sorts of questionnaires; because the applicants know that it's pass/fail, they are forced to imagine what the examiner wants them to say, since they obviously want to pass this portion of the process and get hired. If you then pull a double-secret reverse on them, you're not actually exposing liars or any such thing, you're just screwing applicants for attempting to play the game you set for them in the first place. These tools are unvalidated and simply represent a codification of the bias of the person writing them, and they should be abandoned.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2015 15:58

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Jealous Cow posted:

For those asking about the test being designed to "trick" the subject, see this: http://www.mmpi-info.com/mmpidict1

Assessments like this are designed with controls for validity. The measure consistency across multiple questions, many of which are asking the same question but worded in such a way that it appears as though it's unique. Testing for validity often includes adjusting the score for artificially inflated responses that are designed to secure a more favorable outcome.

Psychologists have become very, very good at this over the last 100 years. If you think it would be obvious which questions are designed to "calibrate" or which ones are duplicates of prior questions I can assure you it isn't. These tests are tested in trials thousands of times before put into use, and I can also assure you that the people who designed and tested this assessment are smarter than all of us.

Edit: not to say that this test is working as intended, just shedding some light.

Question: was this test given to existing employees or new applications in the past and then not used for selection purposes? If not and they out it straight into use without a parallel trial I'd be concerned.

I find fault with this logic (about the people creating these tests being much smarter than us). Even if it were true, it would say nothing about the validity or ethics of deploying such an examination. As for validation, this test was cobbled together based on response of current controllers, but the test itself was never validated. That is, they did not give the BioQ to any working controllers, but they did create it based on controller responses to different questions.

These sorts of examinations are basically bunk. There's no evidence that you can create a short questionnaire that will allow you to distinguish ahead of time between two similarly qualified candidates.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2015 17:11

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

MrYenko posted:

Everyone knows that it's super important for supervisors to be plugged in for four hours a month, as long as it's only between 0630 and 0730 local, on the D side, call forwarded, at a sector with no more than four airplanes in it, while turned around and having a conversation with the low side controller.

Bonus points if they use the guy coming in on a morning OT shift as CIC.

(Three of our five supervisors actually do stay current on a radar position, but they're the exception at our facility.)

The big facility world is so different from the small. Where I'm working now the supes put in about 80-90% as much TOP as the controllers, and that covers all positions and all times of day.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 15:48

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Talked to some former coworkers out there, apparently ERAM poo poo the bed, and when they tried to fail-over to HOST it dropped all the flight plan data out of the FDIO. They've been trying to get workarounds in place, but it's been quite the day.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 19:32

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

They still have HOST as the backup? Ours is DARC which wouldn't really be any different than just dumping all of the flight plan data and all hell breaking loose if we had to go to it. poo poo, I've never actually used DARC, just the "simulation" they set up so you can get checked out. I'd be loving lost.

They would go DARC at ZDC once a week on the midshift while I was out there, just to make sure it still worked mostly. They only made the switchover to ERAM within the last year, I guess they must still have the HOST equipment in place. Thank goodness, cuz damnit, I want to get to the beach in North Carolina today!

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 19:37

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

Didn't even think about how long they'd been on ERAM. I'm pretty sure we got rid of the HOST equipment almost a couple years ago at this point.

I'm constantly amazed at how "lucky" the FAA is getting with some of these incidents as far as the timing of them goes. It's a Saturday morning, so this isn't going to be some huge deal. Some minor inconveniences provided they get it figured out and that's it. ZAU went down a couple of hours before the morning push when it would have been pure chaos. Stuff like that.

I had the same thought. And honestly, though it'll seem a bit callous, both 9/11 and the Great Recession helped the FAA out as well, kept traffic depressed enough that their understaffing hasn't proven catastrophic as yet.

That aside, I'll be really interested to hear what exactly went wrong with ERAM. When I got briefed on it they made it sound as though it was backed up six ways from Sunday, I'm very curious to know how it completely failed.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 20:39

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

MrYenko posted:

The EnRoute Information Display System (gently caress me I can't believe I remembered that acronym) that we have at centers doesn't have a picture. It does have number and type of engines, and some generic climb and descent rate numbers, that are mostly-completely-not-close-to-reality.

Also, ours died today, center wide. So of course some guy wanted to shoot an obscure GPS approach to an uncontrolled field nobody ever goes to.

Queue the mad search for paper charts while I try to string the guy along long enough to get the plate.

Question for you guys, when a helicopter checks in looking for flight following, what do you put in for the type? I have a pet peeve about it, and it seems like damned near everyone just puts HELO. It makes me want to start putting PLNE in for fixed wing VFRs.

I ask, because I had a HELO/U truck into my airspace at 155kts across the ground the other day, and when I asked his type, it was a godamned S61N. Just a bit different than a Robinson or something.

I will put HELO on local VFR flights, because honestly if he's just hanging around in our airspace then it's typically not a big deal (although approach tagged a guy as HELO the other day, had just a november callsign, and when I looked out the window to pick him up it turned out to be a privately owned Chinook!). If it's a NAS VFR then I'll get the actual type to put in.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 15:04

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Zochness posted:

I had a pilot call me out for broadcasting on guard the other day. The thing was, he was broadcasting on my frequency, 121.15. I kindly informed him of this and didn't hear anything from him again

I had a CRJ9 pilot angrily demand to know what he was following one day since he was getting bounced around badly.
"You're following a Pilatus 12 miles ahead."
"...roger".

# ¿ Feb 1, 2016 22:20

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

fknlo posted:

It's absolutely a thing. Especially with Sky West. He told us he'd be able to give us at least .74 once he leveled off.

Better than the goddamn Saab 340s that Colgan used to fly into Dulles. Half the time on initial check-in, "Colgan 3824 with alpha, operationally restricted to 180 knots". :smith:

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 04:34

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

kmcormick9 posted:

Yeah that's where I've been checking but nothing relevant ever gets posted.

Make you sure you click the radio button that says you're a federal employee. I searched a couple times for 2152 gigs and didn't find anything, but then I realized it was only showing me jobs available to the general public.

Dunno if it's what you're looking for exactly, but DCA has a supe bid out currently: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/441357200/

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 14:55

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

I wish you all the best of luck during the Trump administration, it's very hard to predict what might happen throughout the federal workforce, not just with ATC. As for me though, I resigned a few weeks ago to start a new career. Keep those skies safe for us

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 04:18

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Tommy 2.0 posted:

I got to give you mad props for this. Takes a huge set of balls to walk away from something like this.

Thanks, I just finally had enough between the schedule and everything else. I'm glad to make the break and in just a short time I've seen a lot of positive changes in my life thanks to the new job. I get why people don't want to do it though, I'm lucky enough to be in a good financial position and not yet have a family, so I can afford to take a big pay cut. That's not the case for everybody, one of the guys I used to work with has 5 kids with a 6th on the way!

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 05:50

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

MrYenko posted:

Privatizing a federal workforce is really hard. Could it happen? Of course. Will it? Probably not.

Will everyone run around like a chicken getting hosed by a bear dressed in a unicorn costume for the next four years? Absolutely.

Didn't they privatize flight service a while back?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2017 17:58

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

KodiakRS posted:

Let's say your airport is landing on runway 10. At the other end of the airport is a taxiway with a runway 28 approach hold short marking. Do you need specifically need to say "Cross runway 28 approach" for a taxi clearance that crosses the hold short? Or is that line only there to let pilots know where to hold short when given a clearance to do so?

Ferret King is right on as ever. Just like with ILS critical areas, unless you're specifically instructed to hold short of an approach area you can proceed through.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2017 23:35

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Tommy 2.0 posted:

Go to more facilities and try going "black and white" with every single rule. Some places that will get you thrown off the catwalk. Every place has it's own "isms". The last thing you will ever want to be known as is the "at this place we did it like this" guy.

You have successfully summed up one of the biggest problems in ATC, the near complete lack of professional interchange couple with a cultural hostility to the same.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 22:55

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

The Ferret King posted:

Babby's first tower transmission.

*Dude on 20 mile final with a guy holding short*
:eng101:

"You gonna clear that guy for take off?"
:downswords:

"You think he'd make it out in time?!"
:eng99:

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 19:12

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

PT6A posted:

There was a student here that got bitched out by tower on his third solo because he acknowledged an instruction (one non-standard circuit after his touch and go) and then didn't follow it. I told my instructor, who'd been the one to sign him out although he wasn't his normal student, and apparently the dumbassery didn't end there -- the next person who did a walkaround on the plane discovered that the magnetos has been left in the on position after the engine was shut down.

Most pilots are very competent and professional, but I've definitely come across some scary ones. I had the controller give a brasher warning to a lady once after he cleared her for a low-approach, and she did a full stop. She then failed to exit the runway. When she called in and I spoke to her she did not understand what low approach meant, and didn't understand that you have to clear the hold-short bars, not just get your tail over the runway edge, in order to be clear of the runway. It was one of the most surreal conversations I've ever had.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2017 01:34

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

I do have to admit, as a personal matter, I hate the callup, "Potomac Approach, November 123"... and then nothing. I find that extremely unhelpful, and ironically, it's substantially less helpful the busier I am. If I'm busy, I have no idea where to slot you into my workflow (since I don't know what you want) and I'm also afraid to get back to you because too many pilots take that as an invitation to dominate the frequency. To me, no matter how busy I am, a useful callup tells me who you are, where you are (in relation to a fix I'm likely to know about) and what you want. For example, "Potomac approach, Skyhawk 123, 5 miles north of Casanova, request flight following to Martinsburg". Boom, now I know exactly what it's going to take to handle you, and I can take care of the things on my end (transponder code, etc) and get back to you when it makes sense with everything else I'm doing.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 01:07

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

hjp766 posted:

Slight expansion.

When it's manic we get handed off with "kestrel 2719 Monitor London XXX.XX"
1 step back is "Kestrel 2719 Gatwick Director Callsign only"
50% of the time we get a normal "Contact London"

Only wih the instruction contact will we pass anything other than callsign. Except a good morning.

Let's face it at FL380 you want me you ask if I'm up. if your too busy to answer initial and I can hear you I will sit here fat dumb and happy till you talk to me... phone calls in London/ anywhere manic to coordinate are amusing I am told

NB this is why you have guard on box 2... and why frequency readbacks are not a joke...

NB2 Try IATA Inflight broadcast/ self separation over central Africa... whilst being quote unquote "controlled"

Very true. In the US (except for certain airports) "monitor 124.65" is used a lot less frequently, which is annoying when you try to use it and pilots don't get it. I was working a feeder sector and the final guy asked me to start having pilots monitor his frequency when I switched them over. I did, and a half-dozen airplanes later he shouts over "You gonna have these fuckin' guys monitor me or what?!" because none of them had done it, they'd all checked right in

PT6A posted:

As a pilot, how I'd hope that open-ended call would be interpreted is "I recognize the frequency is busy, I'm well outside the area where I need to talk to you immediately, but I have to talk to you for some reason eventually so let's do it at a convenient time" -- so, in essence, always lowest priority compared to everything else. But if it's more convenient on your end for us to just make a succinct but full initial call regardless, I could start making a habit of that too. I'm just nervous about taking more of your time when you've more important things to attend to.

Aye, and like I said, this is just me personally. But speaking for myself, I'd always rather have the basics (who where what) than not.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 14:43

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:03

JohnClark: Mar 24, 2005; Well that's less than ideal

Butt Reactor posted:

Just to make sure I have this right, when controllers say "monitor XXX.xx" we should acknowledge the hand off and then not check in at all on the new frequency until that controller wants to hear from us? Cause that's what I've been doing for the last 3 years or so of my flying career.

That is indeed correct. I don't know if Dulles is special or something, but we had the hardest time getting pilots to do that. You'd tell them to monitor, they'd acknowledge, and then check-in. I think it's just that you get used to things happening a certain way and don't really hear a subtle change.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2017 22:17

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask Me About Air Traffic Control. You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

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