A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/895825
His work ethic and dedication is second to none, he puts his heart into everything he does. We s hould all strive for the same. Scott should take great pride in his accomplishments during hi s tenure. Jim VanZee (NATCA GRR) has officially taken over for Scott; the NATCA TAMR team is looking forward to working with Jim in his new capacity. TAMR Deployment and Common Terminal Digitizer (CTD) Update Submitted by Jim VanZee (GRR) As we finish the first month of the fiscal year, we are still spending plenty of time working through a restriction on travel funding. Necessary in - person site visits and meetings have been delayed or cancelled which can increase risk to the "on - time" piec e of the TAM R program. Work is taking place to identify areas of risk where funding cutoffs line up poorly with IOC transitions, and then trying to change the waterfall dates accordingly. This should help ease the burden of rescheduling, and allow suffici ent coverage at a facility for all necessary stakeholders to be on site, providing appropriate support during transitions. We have been working with Program Office as well as TSLE and OSF leadership to better plan for floorwalker coverage during cutovers to the R4 STARS software, p rimarily at the Core 30 sites. There has been a clearly identified need for this support from our NATCA SMEs for at least the first day or two. Site by site activity for September are as follows: IND: Achieved IOC on STARS G4 E LITE CPR: Achieved IOC on STARS G4 ELITE AVL: Achieved IOC on STARS G4 ELITE OKC: Contractor Acceptance Inspection (CAI) – G4 ELITE equipment has been installed and accepted by the FAA ELP: Equipment Delivery NATCA leadership transitions within the TAM R group con tinue. Scott Robillard and Bill Spence's leadership have been invalua ble and will be sorely missed. We will be meeting in Atlantic City in mid - November with the outgoing and incoming leadership present. This will help ease the transition and remain consistent in our approach and messaging throughout the program. TAMR milestone goals continue to be threatened by the difficulties in deploying the CTD into the ASR - 8 facilities. Two primary issues plague the CTD plan to go IOC at key sites – lack of an acceptable training and certification plan for TechOps (which should be resolved within a reasonable amount of time), and false weather bei ng output to the STARS system. Discussions are taking place within the TAMR program attempting to identify any and all possible interim workarounds for weather that may allow TAMR to deploy a reliable system into as many ASR - 8 facilities as possible in the event that the fix for false weather takes longer than the TAMR timeline can afford. TAMR Software/Hardware Report Submitted by Kyle Ness (M98) System Technical Reports Working Group (STRWG) Stakeholders have been reviewing proposals outlining the STARS Operating System (OS) transition from Oracle Solaris 10 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) via the R12 softwa re build. The decision to change OS was based on a few reasons: diminishing