A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/629688
o We attended a follow up briefing on the JYO remote tower. Mr. Barrett is working closely with the Ft. Hill group on the HF issues associated with this project. Hi s understanding is there will be an SRM panel next month. • Health and Wellness activities: o February's content will debut the Health and Wellness arm of the HPT and will explain the 8 areas that the office will attempt to cover. o A formal scoping document is all but agreed to and should be completed this month. • The residence engineering work Mr. Barrett mentioned last update is no further along, so he really has no new information other than he has peeked the interest of AJI leadership on the concept. • Mr. Bar rett worked with Dean Iacopelli (NE A RVP) on a draft for Article 55 for the successor CBA. Mr. Barrett believes we have a good proposal that will capture all anticipated activities for the HPT WEATHER: Matt Tucker (ZTL) leads NATCA's efforts as the Articl e 48 Representative for Weather. Mr. Tucker's update for this week is below. • American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting o Within AMS is a group known as Aviation, Range, an d Aerospace Meteorology (ARAM). T his group conducts panels that are relevan t to aviation and especially air traffic management. Some of the panels focused on in - situ reporting of airborne weather phenomena. Aircraft based sensors currently measure for wind, temp, water vapor, and turbulence. Most of these reports are currently on broadcast to the company via ACARS or if the company is part of a research program the information may be broadcast to researchers or private company that is using the date for subscriber - based information. The FAA currently funds some date downloads of w ind and t emp data to augment weather forecasts and update wind models that are used in TBFM and conflict probe in the ETFS. Water vapor research is being conducted to determine icing type and intensity . O ne of the sensors that is being used is also be used to research volcanic ash detection. This research is only being conducted on a very limited number of aircraft at the current time. There are plans to expand the resea rch and equipped fleet by 2020. o One of the onboard reporting items that have the most po tential for air traffic control is the turbulence detection. Through the use of accelerometers , the aircraft can report the intensity of turbulence encountered. This information is currently reported as Eddy Dissipation Rate (EDR) and Derived Equivalent Ve rtical Gust velocity (DEVG) , both of these are very aircraft specific. There are currently a number of studies being done around the world using EDR to determine the type and intensity of turbulence being reported by the aircraft and then by the flight cre w. One of the studies being conducted by another country was using weight classes to try comparative readings from the aircraft. The issue Mr. Tucker pointed out to the conductors of the study is that they really need to make sure they are comparing apples to apples. The example that was used consisted of EDR data collected from both Boeing and Airbus airframes , but they were comparing B777 - 200 to the EDR of A320/321. They were advised that using aircraft with such weight differences was