NATCA Bookshelf

We held a telcon with Rob Hunt of the Northeast Corridor (NEC) to discuss the TFM milestones and pre-conditioning project. NEC and FET are working together on joint taskings as part of the NEC project. We also had a telcon with Passur's Leo Prusak to discuss their tool for developing arrival rates for airports. We then held a telcon with Mosaic to discuss their TOS generator tool. The FET team will meet next May 13-14 at NBAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and May 15 at the Spring CDM meeting in Tysons Corner, Va. The April meeting was cancelled due to staffing. TERMINAL AUTOMATION MODERNIZATION REPLACEMENT (TAMR) Aaron Rose (NCT) is the TAMR Article 114 Representative for NATCA. His report is below: Huntington, W.Va. (HTS) made the first transition of the year, from ARTS 2E to STARS on April 12. Delayed by the 35-day government shutdown, the facility had to re-train while the rework of the waterfall determined new dates. Thank you to the NATCA local and the TAMR SMEs who worked hard to ensure a smooth transition. I spent two weeks at the FAA Tech Center in Atlantic City, N.J., testing the R9 software drop and having meetings with Second Level Engineering (TSLE), AJV, and the TSLE test team. I am still working with AJV FAA Requirements and new Article 114 WX Rep Eric Avila to procure a new source of weather for terminal displays. Hugh Wyckoff (TLH), Denise Nappi (Region X), Joe Yannone (Region X), and I viewed a demo of the new Common Terminal Digitizer (CTD) while in Atlantic City. Lack of false weather and depiction of real weather was much improved, but there is still room for more improvement. The CTD Program Office is working with the vendor to improve the removal of AP without impacting the real weather depicted from the ASR-8. Until the Agency realizes that the surveillance radars are not designed as WX radars and commits to a different source we are stuck in the 1950s. This is very unfortunate for aviation enthusiasts and the controllers who have to waste time issuing false weather. Deployment of new optical trackballs has started with PCT, also the keysite. The new optical trackballs have no moving parts beneath the ball portion of the unit. Tech Ops and air traffic will notice a difference with first use and cleaning. R90 (Omaha TRACON) has developed issues with the keyboards once again. The reports indicate that the keyboards are locking up and no entries can be made. TSLE (FAA Second Level Engineering) has indicated it may be a grounding issue once again. Omaha has chairs that are not static free, which in turn can produce a static charge into

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• SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT