Day 2 of RTF

Day 2 of RTF wasn't too exciting. We started off the morning bright and early with a section on primary and secondary radar. It explained all the different components of primary radar and how a radar system works. Not too much point to understanding the details, because even if our scope ends up dying on us or something, I doubt the flying public would like us to try and fix it... "Oh shit, where'd all my beacon targets go? No wait, don't get the supervisor so that he can get the tech, I got this one guys..."

Next we covered the details of the ARTS Color Display, otherwise known as the ACD. We'll be using the ACD lab while the other RTF class uses the STARS lab, since most of us (sorry Phil and Fred) have ACD at our facilities. This section covered the ARTS keyboard again, as well as the different types of data blocks. It was repetitive from what we learned in the ITR course, but only because Dave was nice enough to cover some RTF stuff that wasn't actually required for us to know in ITR. We ran through another exercise just like the ones I described in earlier posts, where our instructor read off call signs, types, and destinations, and we had to enter them into the computer.

After lunch we had two other instructors cover a "pilot teach" lesson. Since we'll be working on part-task scenarios in the classroom, we needed to know how to run things on the pilot end (even though we already covered the basics during ITR). They showed us how to assign an aircraft a different heading, altitude, and speed, and also showed us how to clear an aircraft for an approach, squawk a certain beacon code, and follow a particular route. Then we ran a short exercise that was pure piloting. Aircraft would light up in white, we would click on them, and then we had to input the proper instructions that would have been issued to us by a controller. The instructors were surprised that we all picked it up so fast, and I guess we have Dave to thank for that.

After the pilot teach we covered some of the section on radar identification but ran out of time. More on that tomorrow.