We started out the day with a lecture on separation. It covered the different categories of aircraft and the minimum separation required when in the air and when landing. It was a short section, but it just seemed to drag on (I think it was mostly because Bob was teaching it and he goes into extensive detail to make sure we understand everything... almost a little too extensive). He had some spare time at the end of the section, so he went over divergence with us, as well as some phraseology we'll need to know for RTF. We've been reviewing things we'll need to know for RTF a lot lately. It's not required, but it's definitely great to know ahead of time.
Before lunch we ran another computer simulation like before, and after lunch we met in the RTF labs again. This time half us started out as controllers in the ACD lab and the other half acted as the pilots in the pilot lab. The pilots had to get used to how to use the keyboard in the pilot lab, and they read off the prompts to us. Then we just had to enter the call sign, type, IFR or VFR, and destination into the computer and tell the pilot to squawk a certain code and ident. Once they did that we told them radar contact and moved onto the next aircraft. Not too difficult, and it was just nice to get in the lab and actually talk on the radio for the first time. We switched from controller to pilot after about half an hour so that everyone could get a chance to try it out.
Our final section of the day was on weather dissemination. This covered the different types of weather reports and how to interpret them, and we also had to watch a short video on low level wind shear and microbursts. We only have one section left to cover tomorrow and then we're done with the entire ITR manual.
Tomorrow we have our Block 3 test, and we also get to go into the labs again to run a different scenario. I think Dave said that he was going to put up a scenario on vectors that looks like this:
Basically each aircraft starts at a different point in either the A, B, C, D, or E area. In their data tag it shows the point at which they want to exit (a different letter than where they start). That data tag you see by the letter "A" reads that it wants to exit out of "C." So you just have to give it vectors through the chutes and make sure that it doesn't touch any of the sides. All of the aircraft are already separated vertically, but they are at different speeds (so you have to anticipate this and give some of them their turning instructions a little bit before you want them to turn). The scenario starts out with just five airplanes, but more are added as time goes on. Should be fun. :)
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