Days 4-6 of RTF

On Wednesday of last week we covered vectoring and speed control. The vectoring section covered the proper phraseology to use to issue an aircraft a particular heading, to initiate a vector, and to resume particular procedures. We covered the traffic pattern headings for the airports in Academy airspace, and they'll be helpful to know for when we run approach scenarios. We ran a part-task scenario after this section, which was the vector maze I talked about in an earlier post.

The speed adjustment section covered phraseology for increasing and reducing speed, crossing restrictions with speed involved, and speed requirements for arrivals and departures in Academy airspace. The part-task scenario for this section had a bunch of arrivals coming into AAC, and we had to adjust their speeds to keep minimum separation on downwind and while landing.

On Thursday we covered the last section in our first RTF manual: altitude. This section covered MEAs, MOCAs, MVAs, the NEODD SWEVEN rule, and phraseology for assigning a particular altitude. We also reviewed altitude procedures for arrivals and departures in Academy airspace. The part-task scenario just involved changing altitudes on arrivals into Academy so that airplanes were properly separated.

After we finished the altitude lecture and part-task scenario we had our review for our first block test. We played "Who Wants to Be a Controller?" which was modeled off of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" (complete with the sound effects). It was a fun way to review and it covered everything we needed to know for the test.

After lunch we moved onto our second RTF manual. The first section covered departure procedures like SIDs, releases of IFR and VFR departures, and separation on departure and over obstructions. We ran two scenarios a few times to get the hang of departures. One was working as the north controller, and another was working as the south controller. We got the hang of having departures off of all four airports, and got to practice our phraseology for each situation.

On Friday we moved onto arrival and approach procedures. This covered approach clearances, vectors to final approach courses, GPS arrivals, practice instrument approaches, missed approaches, and VFR to IFR. This one was a pretty long section. The part-task scenario we ran covered approaches into all four airports, but we mostly had to be concerned with the headings from downwind to base to final, and we didn't give full clearances.

I headed out to Denver for the weekend since we had Monday off for President's Day. It was nice to get out of OKC and I managed to find a place to live for when I'm done with the Academy. I also discovered that working for the FAA has its advantages. The security lines at DEN on Monday afternoon were 30-45 minutes long and I started to wait in one when I heard one of the TSA people calling all military, clear card holders, first class passengers, etc., over to an expedited line. I asked her if I could get in that line instead if I was an FAA employee. She just had to take a look at my MMAC badge and I saved myself about half an hour of waiting. :) I'm sure this doesn't work every time, but it sure helped on that day.