NATCA Bookshelf

The group will visit several sites in March to begin the validation of the guidebooks and cutover plans. With these items validated the group will start a waterfall to reach out to all core 30 facilities and ARTCCs to facilitate them building their OCPs. AUTOMATED TERMINAL PROXIMITY ALERT (ATPA) Mike Sanders (SCT) represents the membership as the Article 114 Representative for ATPA. Mr. Sander's report is below. We are in current development for controller training in an eLMS course. In late February we will be conducting an Operational Try Out (OTO) testing the eLMS course at SCT to evaluate and determine suitability. This will include six BUEs from various levels of facilities and experience using ATPA. If all goes well this should be available and fielded for use late March. Any facility that would like to turn ATPA on, please contact me so we can go over adaptation options. That way when the ELMS/CBI training is completed your facility will be ready. DATACOMM Chad Geyer (ZLA) is the Article 114 Representative for DataComm. Below is his update. It was a busy month after the holidays. The year began with a visit to Cleveland ARTCC to brief personnel on what will be involved with the implementation of DataComm. The briefing is a full two days and includes an Overview of what DataComm is, Functionality, CHI, Program Status, Architecture, Procedures, Adaptations, Training, Implementation, Service Volumes, and Load-ability. The facility was great to work with and was very interactive in the briefing. The Program Office hosted a Pilot Demonstration at the WJHTC. The Demo is an opportunity for pilot representatives to view how the avionics will work with the messages being sent. The test lab uses actual ERAM code and Network Service to send the messages. This event also helps the representatives with material that will be needed in their training. There was an initial look at Full Service route messages that would come from the flight deck. Several DataComm SMEs were questioned about what could possibly be sent from the flight deck and depending on the content, how would the controller want it to be displayed. Full Service is planned to be rolled out about a year or two after initial services to provide additional functionality to controllers. The Tower Core Team met in OKC to discuss what additional functionality will be added in Version 12.6 of the Tower Data Link Services (TDLS) system. This will be the last build that the Program Office supports before it is handed over to operations. The group also held a core team meeting to discuss future facility visits for a question and answer briefing to help with the understanding of how the system works and ways the facility can use the functions for their benefit. Since TDLS has been deployed, there are now 28 sites running auto mode compared to five prior to version 12 being deployed. Version 12.5 should allow for many other sites to use auto mode. Auto Mode is a way for the initial clearance that is sent to aircraft to be automatically delivered without controller interaction to send the message.

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