Day 17 of RTF

On day 17 we ran a specialized scenario in the morning and then we ran the post-test scenario. The post-test was exactly the same as the pre-test and it's supposed to show how much we've improved. It wasn't graded and our names don't even go on the report sheet. Compared to running the pre-test when I hadn't really worked any traffic, the post-test seemed incredibly slow and easy.

After we got done with that we had to meet upstairs in the classroom so that the woman who makes the PV schedule could brief us on the PV that we'd be having the next day. She basically just explained that the FAA flies in supervisors from facilities all around the country and told us to make sure we were in the labs about 10 minutes prior to our PV time. It was a short briefing, and then we all went down to the computer classroom to fill out our course evaluations. This was just a short survey asking each of us to review the course and there were also sections where you could type comments if you wish.

After lunch some of us got the chance to run 05WA. It's a single sector scenario so you have control of the entire airspace, but wow, it was crazy. Most of our scenarios start off with about 3 airplanes in the corners of the scope. This one started off with about 8 on the screen, and they were located all over. You immediately had to start issuing instructions, and from there on out it was non-stop transmissions. There were a ton of Academy arrivals, and I ended up slowing most of them to about 150 knots just because there was no other way to work the sequence and fit them all in without having a super long downwind. There were still departures and arrivals off of all the other airports, and it was important to constantly scan and not get lost in just working all of the Academy arrivals. Overall, it was a lot of fun to run (if not hectic), and I still did pretty well. I didn't have any separation errors or compression on final, and when we checked the computer at the back of the class at the end (it shows all errors for each individual scope), it showed that I only forgot to transfer the frequency of one aircraft. Not too bad.

The last two problems of the day were specialized scenarios meant to prepare us for our PV. I think we mostly ran old PV problems. Nothing too difficult.