A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/633543
o Jan 16, 2016, TYS transformation from ARTS IIE to STARS G4 ELITE. The FAA and NATCA collaborated on a time lapse video that creates a video achieve on what a big - bang cutover looks like. o Long term projects like PBI achieved a huge milestone for Contractor Acceptance Inspection (CAI). CAI is where the government purchases the automation platform from the vendor. This is all occurring in the new PBI TRACON. o Three Legacy STARS facilities are progressing their way toward the upgrade from G1 STARS to G4 ELITE STARS. They are Y90, R90 and SBA. o Preparing for the next transformation from an ARTS IIE to a STARS G4 ELITE at FAR, which is February 6, 2016. Subject matter experts from GEG, D01 and TLH will be on site to assist. o RFD will be hosting a rare onsite Operational Testing and Evaluation (OT&E) for the Common Terminal Digitizer (CTD). Due to limitation of the ASR8 at the Te ch Center, RFD was approached. The CTD is essential to completing deployment of STARS across the NAS. • STARS/TAMR Phase 1 update submitted by Jimmie White - PHL o Deployment. F11 Air Traffic training begins on or about 1/28. Tech refresh activities are on sc hedule. A90 planned I.O.C. date is 4/17/16. Air Training teams will need to be put in place by 2/17/16 or there a bouts, for FSL/EFSL training to begin on 3/18/16. Tech refresh activities are on schedule. PIT Initial Site Survey for G4 will be in early F ebruary. o MDM. V2.04 data trapping software did not receive a lot of data in Seattle (key site). There hasn't been but one MDM anomaly since late October. The one event that was received by Esterline is still under investigation, but I didn't get a lot of confidence they will have what they need to find answers. This came out of the PMR on 1/20/16. Tampa is still a proposed site to run V2.04 and is standing by. There is still talk about turning off LFC in Seattle and along with the debugging software, they have hope to link some of the anomalies versus software input as possible causes for failures. This is still a last resort effort. Esterline and the Program office has been advised, Mr. Herrick and Mr. White will have to touch base with the facilit y prior to that decision. Everyone agreed. TSLE wants to get 6 months of testing done at Seattle, but patience is wearing very thin with the AT folks. The MDM team is encourage by the lessened amount of anomalies, but still actively engaged in finding s olutions. o Tech Center Lab crisis. Lab space at the tech center is approaching a crisis level. With new programs on the horizon and software issues from the field and test events, have stretched the TLSE and lab resources thin. As a result, post R4 (merg e) there will not be anymore testing on G1/G2 systems. The Test Teams will look for ways to combine software drops together when possible to gain lab resource availability for future events. Software issues at SCT for example require immediate attention. This then pushes other software roll - outs to the right ie., R4. It's a snowball effect that they did not anticipate and are trying to finds ways to mitigate the crisis. Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSAS) will probable suffer a slide in Tech Center testing. Eric Owens