A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/816138
We attended the Training Guidance Conference (TGC) March 29 - 30. During this time, NATCA, AJR - E (FAA Surface Office), AJI (Safety & Technical Training), and Leidos, b egan building a training plan. Requirements, content, and schedule were all at the forefront of discussion, as we attempt to develop a suitable training plan for such a vast and c ustomizable system. The Program Office was able to find funds to send the three NATCA SMEs and myself to Gaithersburg from April 12 - 14 to attend the first of six Post Release Demon strations (PRDs) for Build 1. At this demonstration, Leidos showed us the final product of our release 1 efforts o ver the last few months. Build 2 will also have six PRD s as well as three Early Use r Involvement Events (EUIEs). We are in the process of ob taining additional Build 2 EUIE s due to the importance of its capabilities a nd frequency with which we are expecting to utilize the scheduling tools contained within. Advanced Electronic Flight Strips (AEFS) With the travel restrictions, the training and implementation of AEFS in CLT is at risk, however, the Program Office did f ind a few extra dollars for our team to travel to CLT to accomplish training. The team also continues to push through all problem reports and enhancement requests in order to improve the system for each facility and their particular operating procedures. 3M have finally, after nearly eight months, provided us with ano ther attempt at a 32" monitor. Their most recent update to the 32 " was found to be unsuitable for our needs and we sent it back in hopes that they would be able to perform additional modifica tions and enhance the clarity and touch cap ability. Due to the travel restrictions, we have only been able to evalua te the monitor once, for about two hours, so additional time will be needed in order to make a final purchase decision. PHX We are still a waiting the delivery of a new color printer for the QA position. Wit h no more paper strips and AEFS' s multitude of color options for strip marking/highlighting, it is necessary to have a color printer for AEFS for the purposes of training, accident/inciden t i nvestigations, and general use. CLE Build 5.3.0.3 has been in operation since early in the year and continues to show improvements in both reliability and speed. CLT A new training schedule was published, and was slightly off from the original plan to have the facility trained by May 12th. This new plan has training continued out until the end of May and going right up to Initi al Operating Capability (IOC). This, combined with the travel restrictions, increases the risk of not having CLT trained and us ing AEFS to meet their original IOC date of May 31. Initial cadre training will take place the week of April 17, and will finish up with the first class of controller training that Thursday. NATCA and AJV - 7 will be testing, on the midnight shifts, CLT ' s adaptations and the stability of the build with ZTL ERAM the week of April 17.