A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/667048
• The Health and Wellness activities: o They connected with the EAP Magellan folks and have begun discussing the services they provide and how we might leverage their products and services with what the team is contemplating. They were very receptive and willing to assist the team. o Mr. Barrett has communicated with Mike O'Dd ry na (NATCA OSHA) to receive assistance in finding out what can be done for the horrible conditions the con trollers at ARR are working in. NAS VOICE SYSTEM (NVS): Jon Shedden (ZFW) is the NVS Article 48 Representative. His update for this week is below • NAS Voice Systems (NVS) demo labs are currently running on Build 11, with Bu ild 12 currently in development (these are beta builds). This is the beginning of the final development stretch leading into Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) scheduled to begin in November 2016. o Mr. Shedden was in Melbourne, FL on March 29th and 30th with Tom Adcock (A48 Training) for the NVS Training Guidance Conference. Development of the NVS training materials is set to begin immediately, and will continue up to 1st course conduct and the training of key site controllers in September 2018. o NVS and ERAM b egan working together to ensure installation compatibility in the DSR console. There will be an NVS demo given to the ERAM CHI team the week of May 9th at the Tech Center in Atlantic City. In addition to the NVS Demonstration lab at the Tech Center, NVS no w has an implementation lab dedicated to the hardware installation of the system. • Next Generation Air - Ground Communication (NEXCOM) continues deployment of new CM300/350 V2 radios to terminal facilities across the country. Deployment is going well. 18 new radios are in work or are going operational in March/April at various sites across the NAS. • In May, Houston Center (ZHU) is set to begin testing the new RCAG , replacing the ARINC ' s VHF Extended Range Network (VERN) in Cancun. The FAA successfully replaced the Key West VERN last summer. These RCAG/VERN radios provide long - range directional radio coverage in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr. Shedden participated in a telcon on March 22nd with the program office and ZHU A rea Representative Shawn Sharpless to discus s the upcoming test procedures. • NAS Voice Recorder Program (NVRP) is the replacement for existing NAS voice recorders (DALR, DALR2, DVRS, DVR2). Vendor meetings occurred between November 19th and December 3rd. There was an NVRP Stakeholder meeting on January 21 st discussi ng requirements and information from the vendor RFI s (Request For Information). There was a meeting on March 24 for the Integrated Requirements Team to begin to validate and shape requirements for the initial Program Requirements document. • The H eadset contract (Plantronics) is expiring in June of 2016. The FAA program office is currently in the vendor selection process and expected to announce the selected vendor in the spring 2016 time frame. There will likely be changes to the availability of e xisting headset models regardless of the vendor selected, although the most popular models will remain unchanged. Mr. Shedden is working with Bill Howard (Program Office) to finalize the Heads et Guide and