A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/812028
and workshops based on the results of the survey. The Agency should be sending Article 7 notification to us soon as they want to pilot this assessment at a facility in May. Health & Wellness ARR : I have received information from tech ops that plans are in the works to finally get some additional space for the facility. Current plans are to lease a traine r that will be located at the base of the tower. Fatigue ZOA : The actigraphs for the study were not purchased as I reported in the last update. Apparently there was a problem with the acquisition process and GSA regulations had to be followed. Unfortunate ly they are twice the price and not as good, so we are getting half as many. ATSAP : Discussed getting the HPT more involved in the ATSAP analysis process with Steve and Mike Blake last week. More discussions to come. NEXTGEN DISTANCE MEASURING EQUIPMENT (NG DME) PROGRAM Samed Rizvi (PCT) is the NG DME National Representative. Mr. Rizvi forwarded the information below for the membership. I continued to attend regular NextGen DME Status and Steering Engineering Workgroup meetings. The group is evaluating t he use of military sites for the end state NextGen DME solution. Mitigations are being developed in the event that military DME s will not be ab le to be used for the solution. Removing military DMEs results in some degradation at the en route coverage floor in va rious areas around the country. Coverage degradation may also be observed in some terminal areas. There are more than 280 existing DME that are not part of the end - state NextGen DME configuration, and some combination of these may make up for some o f coverage losses from not being able to use military sites but fur ther analysis needs to be done. Other mitigations to make up for the lost coverage could be to add more sites. The group is working to realize the benefit s of the program sooner. The follo wing implementation strategy was discussed: First, the approach will continue to implement DMEs en route to support coverage in Class A airspace. Second, the approach could focus on installing DMEs to add redundancy to eliminate the critical DMEs for exi sting RNAV Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARs) and Departure Procedures (DP). RNAV - PRO runs would be needed for each RNAV procedure to verify elimination of the critical DMEs. The STAR/ODPs would be updated to remove the requirement to check the cri tical DME designated. Of the 62 NSG - 1/2 airports, 18 have terminal procedures with critical DMEs.