A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/816138
high and dry. The NATCA TAMR team is available to support and assi st all 11 facilities. Working collaboratively, whether it is locally or nationally, always brings the best results. In other news, San Antonio and Columbus both transitioned this reporting period to STARS. Congratulations!!! Welcome to the club. F & E mo ney for travel and the deployment of STARS throughout the NAS was su spended the week of April 3rd. There were three facilities during the report ing period that were affected. MWH (Moses Lake, WA) was unfortunate in that their IOC (Initial Operating Capacit y) was cancell ed 4 days prior to transition. MWH is now scheduled for IOC the morning of June 11th. R90 (Omaha TRACON) was resched uled , as was BTR (Baton Rouge, La. ). All three facilities stepped up to the plate in difficult times to ensure their members hi p was adequately represented. Looking further down the waterfall, travel money has been allocated to perform IOC events and events supporting IOCs. Each R4 software briefing was initially cancelled but upon further review some will be nece ssary for sites t o transition. Those sites affected will be rescheduled a nd travel funds made available. With limited resources available for travel some events needed to be put on the back burner to include new trackball testing. There have been reports of trackball fail ures throughout the NAS that we hope to mitigate with a newl y designed piece of equipment. This test is now scheduled for April 27th at the Tech Center. Mr. Rose has be en working a number of issues. With the approval of Section 804 consolidations in the M idwest , training the members staying behind at the towers is of major importance. Bill Spence (BTV) is working with Raytheon on a tower only course that will be utilized at these facilities. Still working STARS LITE/ARTS1E site transitions, telcons are sch eduled for next month. ORD tower has now been approved for an additional TDW suite and TAMR is acquiring the funding. Joint Control Facility Edwards automation meetings are on ho ld due to travel restrictions. Coordination with the FacRep Jonathan Wigfall i s complete and Jeff Woods (NATCA PMO) is working with Aaron Rose to reschedule missed meetings. Telcon scheduled next week for CRP (Corpus Christi) on the handoff issue with Naval Air Station Corpus. The face - to - face Article 114 meeting schedul ed for Apr il 11 was cancelled. It was replaced with a two - hour telcon. Discussions revolved around the FAA Helpdesk and how they can better assist terminal faci lities in resolution of issues. How to convey to terminal facilities that all issues nee d to start at the FAA Helpdesk. NATCA TAMR will still field calls fr om terminal facilities though. The workgroup also talked with the new program manager for CTD (Common Ter minal Digitizer), Mike Weiler. We stressed the importance of this piece of equipment to the deploymen t of STARS and how it impacts TAMR. TAMR has two more Article 114 telcons scheduled before our next face to face in June. Hopefully it will not be canceled as well. Mr. Rose traveled to N90 with Jeff Woods and the TAMR agency leadership team to discuss AT Coach issues and find mi tigation prior to needed fixes. We are moving forward with a work around and looking into an iSim product to bridge the gap between now and the delivery date of AT Coach fixes in S eptember 2017. The NATCA TAMR team spent the entir e week of April 3 working thru travel issues and providing NATCA national all events affected. In the event that a CR (continuing