NATCA Bookshelf

National Office Update: Nov. 18-Dec. 22, 2019

A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association

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SAFETY AND TECHNOLOGY UPDATE November 18-24, 2019 Update TERMINAL AUTOMATION MODERNIZATION REPLACEMENT (TAMR) Kyle Ness (M98) is the TAMR Article 114 Rep for NATCA. His report is below: Kyle Ness, NATCA TAMR Article 114 Rep: It's been a busy month for deployment activity. Grand Forks ATCT (GFK) achieved IOC as a remote tower off the Grand Forks AFB which successfully transitioned to the STARS G4 ELITE system. It is not a common system configuration for an FAA tower to hang off a DOD RAPCON and this presents an added challenge of coordination between the two groups when preparing for a STARS IOC. The teams pulled everything off with relatively minor hardware complications and no software or adaptation issues. While at the tower, there was discussion of ADS-B related software tools that may be of interest to the controllers there. The DOD approach to adapting ADS-B as a sensor input in STARS differs from the FAA which potentially excludes certain FAA towers from ADS-B functionality. After some coordination with NATCA SBS and the DOD, steps are being taken to adapt ADS-B and FUSION at RDR/GFK. Norfolk (ORF) received STARS G4 equipment delivery and installation of MDMs as part of pre-IOC activity. NATCA TAMR SME Chris Hilbert worked with the site to optimize MDM brightness settings with TRACON ambient lighting. Memphis and Lubbock also completed Contractor Acceptance Inspection (CAI) of STARS equipment in mid- November. A pre-CAI checkpoint meeting was held at Charlotte (CLT) on Nov. 19 with CLT stakeholders, the TAMR PMO, and myself. Raytheon equipment installation in the new TRACON and tower is on track and the status of five additional TDW suites that were procured outside TAMR one-for-one equipment methodology is scheduled for installation prior to IOC June 21. Grand Canyon Tower (GCN) declared operational readiness decision (ORD) on Oct. 27. This marks the last of the ARTS IE systems to be converted to STARS G4. Cincinnati (CVG) successfully declared IOC on Nov. 21, adding the Lexington (LEX) radar feed to the STARS system. STARS OS Day was held Nov. 14 at Raytheon in Marlborough, Mass. Support for the Oracle Solaris 10 operating system ends in January 2021, and STARS will transition to the Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 operating system in early 2022. OS day gathers stakeholders to discuss the various facets of OS software development, training, and deployment. Software development is scheduled to meet planned delivery and the results user evaluations of AT Coach/AT Prepare in September are still under review. Shreveport (SHV/BAD) successfully implemented Direct Sensor Feed (DSF) on the STARS G4 ELITE system. SHV STARS configuration is unique since the tower is not co-located with the TRACON but operations are combined to the tower during the mid-

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