A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/703686
Initially they said they didn't plan any changes to the way they classify needed repairs to VORs but there has been a lot of discussion on the need to k eep the MON VORs up and running as much as possible. We are still examining the results of several recent Flight Checks to determine if the proposed 77 - mile service volume at 5000 feet is going to be realistic. The VOR MON controller familiarization video is still not ready for review by NATCA yet. We had hoped to see the script as well as the actual video last month but delivery of those items has been delayed. The video was initially supposed to be released via ELMs but that has now changed. A final deci sion hasn't been made but the most likely possibility will be via a webinar. WEATHER : Matt Tucker (ZTL) is NATCA's Article 48 Representative for We ather. His upda te for the membership is below. Weather and RADAR P rocessor (WARP) The current upgrade for WARP has completed factory and site acceptance testing at the tech center. In addition to the hardware testing the system has undergone one of two meteorological evaluations, the first one was a review of 10 test cases that were selected to look at specifi c types of weather events that happen in the NAS. This evaluation has been ongoing for almost a year as Harris and UNISYS delivered the test cases to the Tech Center. A demonstration of 6 of the 10 test cases took place at the tech center to validate and m anipulate the mosaics to make sure they were suitable for deployment to ERAM. The national deployment of the upgrade will start at ZTL, ZDC, and ZAU at the end of August , with completion of the deployment by mid - November. The first m osaic to be deployed will be the all data mosaic, which will have some clutter still in the mosaic. This mosaic will be replaced with the high confidence mosaic by January. The high c onfidence mosaic is still under going metrological evaluation; so far the mosaic far exceeds the ex pectations. Offshore Precipitation Capabilities (OPC) The FAA started a field evaluation of OPC at ZMA and ZHU in the oceanic sectors. This evaluation has the OPC generated mosaic displayed on the large WARP displays in the ocean areas. The product is a RADAR proxy rendered from lightning, satellite, and machine learning. Operational information is being gathered to determine wither the produce is suitable to proceed in the process to include the OPC mosaic into the national radar mosaic to be put on ERAM . The test is scheduled to continue through the end of July. Once the report is completed the decision will be made to proceed in getting the mosaic to ERAM. NextGEN Weather Processor (NWP) and Common Support Services - Weather (CSS - WX) NWP and CSS - WX have both achieved Preliminary Design Review (PDR), and CSS - WX has completed Critical Design Review (CDR). Both programs are conducting a lot of human factors work to get the basic interface and product descriptions documented for Raytheon and Harris . This pro cess has changed as originally the contractors were doing the description documents but are now being done by the agency. Both programs have had human factor workgroup meetings for maintenance