NATCA Bookshelf

Another software failure has occurred with the next NIDS build (3.6.4) earlier this week at the Technical Center in Atlantic City. This failure occurred before the NATCA witnessed Operational Testing and Evaluation, scheduled for the week of June 11, while preliminary testing was being conducted. Unfortunately, this is the same test failure that occurred in May that forced the postponement of testing until June. The FAA management of the IDSR/NIDS program is still in transition from Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to Second Level Engineering in Atlantic City. It has not been a smooth changeover as staffing is restructured and some people get moved to work on EIDS. There are no major issues reported with the deployed NIDS systems at this time. If anyone needs to discuss any issues or has questions please contact Richie Smith at idsr@natca.net . The NAS Voice System (NVS) schedule has officially slipped. The FAA and Harris continue to work on a new schedule. The detailed schedule is expected around the April time frame. Mr. Shedden is working on requirements review. Next Generation Air-Ground Communication (NEXCOM) continues deployment of new CM300/350 V2 radios to terminal facilities across the country. Some terminal facilities in the NAS using very old radios hear a pop back or "squelch tail" when they release their transmitters. The new radios being deployed under NEXCOM Segment 2 do not have this "feature" as the squelch tail is generally regarded as undesirable in radio communications. This issue has cropped up twice now during deployment and the program office should brief future affected facilities prior to install. NAS Voice Recorder Program (NVRP) is the replacement for existing NAS voice recorders (DALR, DALR2, DVRS, DVR2). The Program Office presented to the JRC and received approval to proceed to Final Investment Analysis, leading up to the Final Investment Decision. Final Investment Decision will be in February 2019. Key site for NVRP will be Seattle Center in the 2020. A Safety Risk Management Panel is schedule for April 12th. NVRP is currently in the source evaluation phase. Grand Rapids Tower/TRACON (GRR) is reporting multiple issues with their aging voice switch. There's one outstanding issue where a RADAR site is causing interference in the Tower Cab. That issue continues to be worked. The Tone Mitigation National Workgroup met in September 2017 to discuss potential mitigations to the number and severity of tone/noise events across the NAS. This workgroup kicked off largely because of the number of tone/noise events occurring at PCT. One of the outcomes from these meetings was exploring the use of new headset bases which incorporate an active limiter. Mr. Shedden will travel to PCT the week of June 18th to test the new headsets at PCT.

• Cover