A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/724722
T he week of August 22nd, I traveled to Seattle to meet with Seattle ARTCC (ZSE) and Seattle TRACON (S46) to discuss wa ys to get TBFM ready for TSAS. Seattle will be one of the key si te locations for TSAS. Therefore, to give TSAS its best chance for success, we will work with the facilities to tweak the system and find ways to condition the flows further away from the airport. These changes should result in less holding and vectoring in the en route environment and less vectoring in the terminal environment. We have another meeting scheduled f or the week of September 19th. We also had Matt Gammon and Kevin Bell observing the operation at ZDC for ZDC's upcoming IDAC install (date t o be determined). The last week of August , I was in D . C . with the TSAS workgroup working on TBFM requirements. Although the meetings are going well, it is very difficult to develop a system site unseen. While in D . C . , I attended a meeting with the FAA media group that is developing a TBFM video. The video is still in production but the first cut looked very good. TERMINAL FLIGHT DATA MANAGER (TFDM): Matt Baugh (IAH) is the TFDM Article 48 Representative . Approximately two weeks ago, Lockheed Martin (LM) sold a portion of its company to Leidos, an already massive Departmen t of Defense ( DOD) contractor. With the merger, Leidos will now be th e primary contractor for TFDM. With the contract being awarded to LM, now Le idos, nearly two months ago, we have started FAA/Leidos workgroups in order to divide the workload. These workgroups consist of NATCA, FAA, and Leidos personnel and will include, but not be limited to : Requirements, Interface, Human Factors/CHI, Safe ty, and Security. Of these workgroups, we have already had productive debates regarding the requirements and human factors portion of TFDM. These will be the most important WG s from a controller stand point, as they will drive what TFDM will ultimately look like and how it will interface with TFMS and TBFM. The first TFDM Early User Involvement Event (EUIE) is tentatively scheduled for the second week of October 10/13. This event will involve the three new NATCA members (still TBD) of the TFDM team and myself. We will travel to D . C . and meet with LM and participate in the system demos . The previously scheduled MITRE 3T (TBFM, TFDM, & TF MS) meeting/demo has tentatively be en rescheduled for 10/20 & 21. Upon completion of thi s meeting, the teams for the 3T s will have a better idea of how our three programs will interface in the NAS. Advanced Electronic Flight Strips (AEFS) Testing of th e latest Engineering Build (ER2) will begin next Sunday, 9/11, in CLE on the mid, and continue for three mids. Once those tests are complete, a decision will be made to either keep the build running or to revert back to the current ER1 build. This build has shown to be a vast improvement in stability and speed during testing in the lab at the Tech Center. However, this will be the first live test, but we are confident the improvements will make life at CLE with AEFS easier. There is still work to be done wi th AEFS if it is to be updated in PHX, and eventually installed to CLT for t he upcoming ATD - 2 integration. The overhaul of the code will be complete sometime in November and the team will take approximately 6 - 8 weeks to test it at the T ech C enter before w e move forward with midnight field - testing. Unfortunately, the current 32 " monitor we are using for AE FS is no longer in production. We have tested a variety of new models from the current company as well as others, but ultimately chose the same company a nd their new display. The initial testing of this monitor was not positive, however, 3M has assured us that they can tweak the display settings to give us the same resolution of the current monitors.