A publication of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association
Issue link: http://natca.uberflip.com/i/924659
Board will arrange a meeting with ARCON to discuss further. Raytheon conducted a meeting to explain new enhancements to Conflict Alert – CA Level-Off Suppression of Alerts (CALOSA) and CA Suppression on Approach Path (SOAP). Both capabilities provide full or partial suppression of Conflict Alert when arrival aircraft are maneuvering to the approach path or departing aircraft level off at assigned altitude. Operating Testing and Evaluation (OT&E) No OT&E events are scheduled for December. R4c Run for Record is scheduled the end of January. Program Trouble Report Working Group (PTRWG) NATCA SMEs from NCT, M98, PHL and D01 participated in the December meeting. Stakeholders reviewed several PTRs that had been written against the S4.R22 software build and earlier. Four will be closed, two made significant jumps up in the list, and several other PTRs have action items assigned for revalidation or review before or during the next PTRWG. NATCA introduced two PTRs for ranking. The first increases default ghost targets for CRDA and the second changes when 'Duplicate Address' displays on the STARS data block. Raytheon recently offered revised specifications to correct a PTR written to change how Pilot Reported Altitude is used for safety alerts. Stakeholders concurred that the change is not desired and the PTR was put on the watch list. Field Support Mr. Ness visited Fargo ATCT to brief the local cadre team on the R4 software build. This was also an opportunity to review an ASR-11 issue that is causing radar reflections and track anomalies. An antenna tilt study was conducted in October to mitigate these reflections but has not completely solved the problem and a modification to STARS software may be the solution. TAMR Deployment and Common Terminal Digitizer (CTD) Update Submitted by Jim VanZee (GRR) Although relatively short because of the holidays and associated moratoriums, December was a busy and successful month for the TAMR programs. After much discussion and timeline shuffling around the threats of government shutdowns, we successfully achieved IOC at MCI, BHM, A11 (Tech Refresh sites), LCH, and SPI (Segment 2 sites). These transitions allowed both the Tech Refresh and the Segment 2 programs to meet their 2017 APB milestones. The CTD Program continues to work toward a path to deployment. A software build is in the works to address the amount and intensity of false weather that is being output to the STARS systems. We roughly plan on this software build being tested and hopefully deployed sometime late 2018. In the interim, all stakeholders are working on an acceptable mitigation that assists Air Traffic at the facility level in how to handle and respond to instances where AP or other false weather are present. TERMINAL FLIGHT DATA MANAGER (TFDM) Matt Baugh (IAH) is the Article 114 Representative for TFDM. Mr. Baugh's update is below.

