Day 7 and 8 of RTF

On Monday we covered additional services, radar services to VFR aircraft, and visual approaches. The section on additional services covered the duty priorities of controllers, traffic advisories, the traffic alert and collision avoidance system, weather and chaff information, and bird activity. Radar services to VFR aircraft covered the approach sequence, control transfer, termination of service, terminal radar service areas, and class B and C service. The section on visual approaches covered vectors for a visual approach, clearance for a visual approach, visual approaches to multiple runways, and contact approaches.

Today we started our last lecture section: emergencies and unusual situations. This covered emergency situations (distress and urgency situations), controller responsibilities, ELT signal assistance, emergency beacon codes, radar assistance techniques, aircraft bomb threats, no radio procedures, primary and secondary radar failure, and fuel dumping. After we were done with this section we had a review for our second block test, in the style of "Who Wants to Be a Controller?" We got through the review and the test pretty quickly and then we had a similar review for our radar qualification exam. This one was a 50 question test and it was still pretty easy, and we took it just before lunch. We were originally supposed to take it tomorrow, but Elizabeth let us get it out of the way so that from tomorrow on out all we have are scenarios to run.

After lunch we ran scenarios through the end of the day. There was one that had arrivals to James and Bartles, and we had to get used to the phraseology for each type of arrival. We also had to remember the whole, "Report cancellation of IFR this frequency in the air or with McAlester radio on the ground. Change to advisory frequency approved." (That part was for arrivals into James.) Then we ran a scenario that added Academy arrivals along with the James and Bartles arrivals. That one was definitely a lot busier. There was also a scenario that was just Academy arrivals, but there were a ton of them. Speed adjustments were needed to work everyone in and you had to work them from both the north and the south side.

Tomorrow we run part-task scenarios all day but this time we get ghost pilots for the day so that all of us can be controllers at once. We may be able to use one of the labs tomorrow, but we don't know for sure yet. On Friday we officially start in the ACD labs, and we'll also have our pre-test. This is basically a scenario we run that we know nothing about and supposedly it's pretty busy. We're expected to do poorly on it, because we also run the same scenario on the very last day of class and it's supposed to show how well everyone has improved.