Well today reminded me of being back in an intro to ATC course much like I had freshman year of college. We knocked out three more sections in our manual, but we're still not even halfway through it. First we covered keyboarding. I figured it might be a little more interesting to listen to the lecture since our instructor told us that we'd actually be able to use the computers to complete an exercise, but I was wrong. He lectured us on the ARTS keyboard and the slew ball device and then brought up radar scopes on our computers. Next to each monitor we have a small touch screen that simulates an ARTS keyboard, and we used that for the exercise. All we did though was enter in call signs that he read aloud. Exciting stuff, let me tell you. Because entering "N428CD" and pressing "Enter" is really something that I couldn't figure out on my own (sense the sarcasm here). Here's a picture I took of the touch screen ARTS keyboard:
Next we covered airspace basics. We used an e-learning module to listen to the main part of the lesson, and it just explained the different classifications of airspace. Nothing that we hadn't seen before. I'm sure even the guys who took the AT Basics course are getting bored with this stuff. Our final lecture of the day was on general control. It was a pretty long section, and still just as boring. It covered transfer of communications, equipment malfunctions, special use airspace, and a few other similar things. We also had a point where we were grouped into two teams and had to complete a word search while following various changing instructions on the overhead. While it was a nice change from the lecture, it felt too much like I was back in a middle school class or something.
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