A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/706293
• NOTAM s will not be required for UAS operations under Part 107 ; • Class G operations no longer require ATC permission to operate ; • Operations in Class B, C, D , and E surface areas are allowed WITH air traffic authorization (look for an mandatory briefing item on this process) . Part 101, Subpart E Hobbyist/Modeler operations have now been codified in this section of the FAR s. Guidance on these operations i s now much clearer. Part 101/Model/Hobbyist operations may be authorized in Class B, C , or D airspace given the following conditions: • Operation will take place at a fixed location ; • When there is a LOA between the controlling facility and a community – bas ed organization ; • Any other Part 101/Model/Hobbyist requests in B, C, or D airspace will be denied. WEATHER : Matt Tucker (ZTL) is NATCA's Article 48 Representative for Weather. Weather and RADAR processor (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 . T he first one was a review of 10 test cases that were sel ected to look at specific 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 manipulate 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 osa ic 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, and so far exceeds expectations. 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 are as. The product is a RADAR proxy rendered from lightning, satellite, and machine learning. Operational information is being gathered to determine whether the produce is suitable to proceed in the process to include the OPC mosaic into the national radar mos aic 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 process has changed , as originally the contractors were doing the description documents , but they are now being done by the agency. Both programs have had human factor workgroup meetings for maintenance and control functionality and NWP has had o ne meeting for the initial design meeting for the Aviation