A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/617391
· Due to the federal government funding deadline last week , t wo facility visits had to postponed: CID and MKE. The Program Office is trying to reschedule these visits to the first week in January that does not conflict with other travel - January 19 - 22. CID needs their network to be upgraded to the latest operating s ystem and MKE needs to be introduced to the newly instituted issue/problem reporting processes that are currently being used in ERAM and other programs. · NATCA participated in meetings to discuss the next wave of software releases. An agreement was reached between the FAA and NATCA opting for the next maintenance release from All Weather Inc. (AWI) to be delivered to the FAA for testing and ready for deployment by June of next year. Further builds are being discussed with the idea of quarterly releas es in mind. · While the PO is slated to present its proposal to the Joint Resolution Council (JRC) on January 20 , they have also constructed a proposal to reduce the scope of NIDS deployment. This proposal reduces the number of NIDS networks from th e original 71 stated in the waterfall schedule to 41. The " eliminated " facilities will be individually contacted with the news. This proposal is of course financially driven and takes into account the next IDS replacement product known as EIDS. A large con cern about this course of action is that EIDS is projected for deployment in 2021 at the earliest. NAV AID MONITORING EQUIPMENT (NME): Corrie Conrad (PDX) represents NATCA as the Article 48 Rep resentative to the NME project. The group was not able to complete the initial Operationa l Safety Assessment last month. The team is sch e duled to meet again January 12 - 1 4, 2016 to complete the assessm ent. NAS VOICE SYSTEMS (NVS): Jon Shedden (ZFW) serves the membership as the NVS Article 48 Representative. The NVS update for this week is below. · NAS Voice Systems (NVS) is in the process of deploying Build 11 to the FAA demonstration labs (ACY, OKC, MLB). This is the beginning of the final development stretch leading into Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) schedule to begin in November 2016. We continue to work functionali ty and human factors issues. o The NVS Key Site facility representatives have been identified and are tentatively scheduled to visit the Harris Demo Lab in Melbourne, FL for an on - site fa miliarization in February 2016. · Next Generation Air - Groun d Communication (NEXCOM) continues deployment of new CM300/350 V2 radios to terminal facilities across the country. Deployment is going well with only one minor issue identified so far. Nineteen new radios are going operational in December at various sites across the NAS. · NAS Voice Recorder Program (NVRP) is the replacement for existing NAS voice recorders (DALR, DALR2, DVRS, DVR2). The NVRP program is currently in the middle of vendor selection. There are tentative meetings scheduled for January to define/refine re quirements of the new recorder. · The Headset contract (Plantronics) is expiring in June of 2016. o The FAA program office is currently in the vendor selection process and expected to announce the selected vendor in the spring 201 6 time frame.