Finally after almost 4 years in the FAA, I am a CPC at DuPage Airport in West Chicago. It was by no means an easy road- there were many ups and downs along the way- but I have learned so much along the way and I have much more to learn. It feels great to not be in training any more, as well as a little surreal still. I know that I worked hard to get here, but I also have many people to thank for my success. Everyone at DPA who helped in my training, everyone I worked with at C90 because I learned so much from all of them, as well as all of the people I learned from both times at the academy. I am sure I will move on at some point, but for now I plan on enjoying it.

So I guess it is always better late than never, but training at C90 ended for me in September of 2011. I felt that I was getting close to certifying on North Sat at times, but then there were times where I was struggling to keep up. It wasn't anyones fault, I simply had nothing to fall back on when traffic got complex or something out of the ordinary happened (which was more often than not). I was very sad to have to leave C90 because I had a fantastic experience there. I learned an incredible amount and I made lots of great friends . I was very lucky to have great trainers and training supervisors. I can't say that everyone who was placed off the street to a level 12 would say the same thing about their experience, but I was lucky. So the C90 door has closed for me (for now), but I think several more have opened. First of all, I didn't have to move. I was able to stay in the Chicago area and I now work at the DuPage Airport (DPA) in West Chicago. Second, I had always wanted to work in a tower and I think if I had completely certified at C90 (which would not have been a bad thing at all) then I would not have had the chance to work in a tower. In addition, I think that (once I certify) having a tower CPC as well as some radar experience that I will have a lot more opportunities to go where I want and do what I want as a controller.

So a brief synopsis of what has happened since September of 2011 follows. My training was stopped and about a month or so after I found out I was offered DPA as one of my choices. I went to OKC for tower class in December of 2011. It was nice to get in so quickly but it was also hard because our first child (for now at least!) was born on October 6, 2011. Having to leave my wife for 10 weeks wasn't great, but it wasn't the end of the world either. I can't even imagine how hard it is for the men and women in the military to leave their families for months or years. Anyways, I got through OKC and then got to DPA in mid/late February 2012. I finished FD/CD pretty quickly and then ground control a couple months after that. Now I am training on local control and I absolutely love it.

I think working in a tower is very fun, especially when there is a good mix of VFR and IFR going on. I can't say definitively that tower or radar is harder, because both have different reasons for complexity. I hope that by the end of the summer or early fall I will be fully certified. I am lucky because now I have everything that I learned at C90 to fall back on in my training at DPA. I hope that I'll have a certification post fairly soon!

Training on North Satellite

I started the classroom and lab for North Satellite (north sat.) in the middle of August. Training on north sat., despite the max hours being lower, can take longer than departures simply because the traffic isn't always consistent, and certain days have busy periods of traffic while others are very slow. It is certainly not the same as knowing that there are departure rushes at certain times of the day and they are consistent. Also, instead of having several departure sectors to pick from and move to depending on the traffic, there is only one north sat. position. Another factor that adds to the slow progression of training is that I can work departures now so if they need me to work instead of train, I am working. With several people training on one position with limited traffic, it can take a little while; it is a test in patience.

One thing you may wonder is that if it is so slow most of the time, then why should getting certified take so long if that is the type of traffic that you are most likely to encounter. The main reason is that when it does get busy, it can get busy in a hurry, and the supervisors need to know that I am able to handle a sudden onset of traffic and still be safe. Another thing is that despite being certified on departures, north sat. is completely new to someone with no previous experience.

This is the true meat and potatoes of ATC. I'm not just putting departures in line and shipping them to the center. I get to sequence arrivals, release departures, work overflights into the south sat. airports, and do VFR advisories. The lateral airspace boundaries are very big. It is all of C90's airspace north of O'Hare, but with only two altitudes, 3 and 4,000' (2,000' is available over the lake). Depending on the landing configuration at ORD, a chunk of the north sat. airspace can be taken away by the descent area used by arrivals. There is a wide range of aircraft types as well, from small GA aircraft to corporate jets. It makes using speed control based on a common turn on point very important, but without any prior experience it takes some time to learn. Not all traffic is coming from the same direction either. The traffic can come in from six different locations which makes counting miles to a common point that much more difficult.

There are two Class D towers in the airspace, the primary one being Chicago Executive (PWK- formerly Palwaukee) and Waukegan (UGN) with five uncontrolled airports. PWK is about eight miles north of ORD, so regardless of the wind, all of the approaches are done from the north via RWY 16 (ILS/LOC, GPS, and VOR). Then they either land straight in, cancel their IFR with the tower and circle VFR to RWY 34. If the weather is really bad, they will circle IFR to RWY 34, which requires a point out to ORD, and depending on the departure traffic they have, they may not be able to take a point out for a while. The departure releases off of PWK are also complicated by the proximity to ORD. If they can depart RWY 34, then departure releases are easy. If they have to depart RWY 16, then, depending on what ORD is doing for arrivals and departures, we have special procedures to use. If ORD can launch departures over PWK, then we have to get an acknowledgement from them that they will protect for a departure off of PWK RWY 16. When ORD is landing RWYs 14R and 22R, which PWK is conveniently nestled right between the approach courses to those runways, we have to use the PWK 2 SID, which requires a departure off of 16 to make a tight right turn that protects for the 14R arrivals and then depending of if there is traffic inbound to PWK a turn across the localizer that provides at least 45 degrees of divergence from the arrivals before losing 3 miles or 1,000 ft. This limits us to using an initial heading of between 025 and 040. Anything more that 040 would get in the way of the 22R arrivals.

UGN isn't nearly as complicated or busy as PWK. There are three approaches into UGN, GPS 5, ILS 23, and GPS 23. One thing that can add complexity to the entire operation is when UGN is advertising the GPS 5 approach and the weather is either IFR or very marginal VFR taking visual approaches out of the picture. The final approach course of GPS 5 crosses the RWY 16 final approach course into PWK. With only two altitudes to use, ever tool has to be used to keep the aircraft separated while keeping the operation efficient. The five uncontrolled airports don't get a significant amount of traffic, but they can add to the complexity when they do have even one arrival or departure. The biggest culprit here is Campbell airport (C81) which is right between where the UGN 5 and PWK 16 final approach courses intersect. The main problem is when the weather requires the crossing approaches and then an aircraft that cannot cancel their IFR until they are on the ground. Protecting for C81 while the IFR is still active basically shuts down approaches into UGN and forces you to stay at 4,000' for the PWK arrivals until they are well clear of C81, which is hard to say exactly how far you need to protect for the missed approach, because there is no guarantee that the pilot will climb and turn in a timely manner. Fortunately, this situation doesn't happen on a regular basis, but it does happen sometimes.

I know it is hard to describe everything without a picture, so I apologize if my descriptions are a bit confusing. I really enjoy north sat. and I hope to be done sometime in the spring.

It has been a while since my last update and a lot has happened. I have learned a lot more working on my own than I could have with a trainer. I also moved days off for the summer so I got to know and work with a different group of people. I also started my next phase of training which is both fun and exciting.

Working On My Own

Two days after certifying on departures, my wife and I went on vacation. It was a great way to celebrate, but it wasn't so much by design. It just happened to work out that I got my checkride just before my vacation. The only problem with leaving for vacation after certifying is that not only are you a little nervous working on your own for the first time, but you are also a little rusty from being gone for a week.

My first day back from vacation started out well, but we had some thunderstorms on their way in from the west. My third session of the day I was working the east and north departure position and thats when the thunderstorms started to really become a problem. The north-bound departures were not flying through the climb corridor that we have in Milwaukee's airspace, so I had to stop the departures going north. This was for sure the right call to make, but unfortunately I was just a little to excited when I yelled out to stop the north-bounds, and it ended up sounding slightly desperate and panicked. I was made fun of for a little while after that about how I sounded, but it was all in good fun. I took two important lessons away from that experience.

1) Don't be afraid to ask for help. It is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you know your limits and that you are a safe controller. Obviously everyone has different limits based on many factors (experience, workload, weather, etc). I'm sure now almost a year later, I could handle a similar situation on my own much better just because I have a lot more experience to fall back on.

2) Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself. I could have easily gotten really defensive and told people that I had just returned from vacation and I had just certified and blah blah blah. The point is no one would care, and they wouldn't want to hear my excuses. Looking at it from a different perspective, it was pretty funny how I yelled out to stop the departures. I even joined in taking a couple shots at myself when it was appropriate.

Both of these things I had been told from numerous people and I knew, but this really helped to reinforce them in my mind. I have fantastic trainers that I learned an enormous amount from, but I have learned so much from just working on my own and trying to get better every day.

A New Crew

About a month or so after I certified I was told that my days off would be changing for staffing reasons and for training (I know that won't be the last time that happens either). At first I was kind for bummed because I really liked my days off that I was on (Mon/Tues) and I really liked everyone that I worked with. My wife and I were also used to the schedule so it would mean having to get used to a new routine. I was comfortable where I was and it is never fun to have to go out of your comfort zone. I knew that there wasn't anything that I could do about changing days off (Wed/Thurs) so I might as well get over it.

It turns out that I really liked the people on the new crew and it was nice to get to know other people that I had never worked with before. This way, no matter what set of days off I end up on, I will know everyone on them, especially if I have to train with someone different. This moved ended up being temporary, because in the fall I was moved back to my old days off for training.

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So my training is terminated. All posts about how things are here are mostly accurate. I'd like to elaborate but it may lead me down a path I may never return. I am no waiting for a tower and moving furniture for plans and programs. Nice to know the agency wants me to stay mentally engaged.:bs:

Well here I go again, I am a year away from my end of service date and I'm preparing to transition out of the Marine Corps to the 1st Civ Div again. Last time it wasn't as smooth as I had hoped. I was in from 1998-2004 as an Infantryman. I had been promoted up to Cpl and had the score for Sergeant but chose to exit stage left. I returned from Iraq and immediately got out, no plan, nothing in place, just out.

I worked for the State Dept Diplomatic Security for a while, and worked security/protection for numerous other companies, but always on a contract basis, and contracts run out, or get cancelled by the Govt. SO after years of struggling I reenlisted in 2007.

Now I am determined not to have a repeat performance. I am from Michigan and wouldn't mind returning their to work, but I would rather make the move to Alaska. I have friends and family there and judging purely off of the fact that I detest civilization, and grew up 20 miles from the edge of nowhere, I think I'd fit in just right in Bethel, Kodiak, Kenai or King Salmon.

I am thoroughly politically incorrect as are many Marines but add in a side of redneck to go along with that and the recluse, and you have a fair idea of me. I trap, hunt, fish, shoot and reload so according to my family in AK i'll fit right in.

I started this blog to document the path I take from Marine ATC to either DOD or FCT and add in a little commentary to spice up the dull details. Enjoy...

I guess the light was pretty close. I certified on departures today. It is a huge weight off of my shoulders now that I don't have to try to guess when I will get certified or if I will or whatnot. It is a great feeling. I worked for the first time on my own this afternoon for one session at the end of the day. It was really fun doing everything on my own. I thought it would be kind of scary actually because there isn't someone there, but that is actually more of a relief knowing that you can control the way you want to. Also, even though someone isn't plugged in with you, you are never alone. There is always help when you need it, and that is one of the biggest things that was stressed to me is to ask for help as soon as I need it. I think I covered that a lot on the last post but it can't hurt to re-iterate it. It is also nice because my wife and I leave for vacation on sunday (today is friday the 26th) so that will be a great way to celebrate.

At this writing I am still training on departures. I have just over 300 hours under my belt, and my checkride seems so close yet so far away. I was hoping that I would have been certified already, but I wasn't quite ready yet. Going into February I was doing really well. My trainer released me to the crew so that everyone else could give their opinions and offer technique advice. That was going well for about a week and then I hit a wall. I had one bad session and it started an avalanche of more problems. My confidence was severely diminished and I felt like I could not do anything right. I was given an extension so I could have more time to regain my confidence and get back to where I was before.

I did a couple of skill enhancement days in the lab as well to help with that. It is kind of frustrating when you need to work on busy traffic but you only have light to moderate sessions. Thats why the lab was very useful. They could crank up the traffic level and then I could do it again the next problem so that I could fix what I messed up before. After that I went back to the floor and continued training feeling better about everything.

It was hard to see at the time, but all the mistakes and bad sessions that I was having were teaching me a lot. It was also a reality check for me. I think because I had been doing so well before, I was getting a little overconfident. You have to control along a fine line that borders confidence and cockiness. You don't want to sound like you don't believe in yourself or that you have no clue what you are doing. The second you start doing that the pilots will question everything you say and it will add a tremendous amount to your workload.

You can't be cocky either. There are only so many aircraft that each person can handle at a time, and depending on the complexity of the situation, it can change dramatically. You can't let your own ego get in the way of keeping aircraft separated. If you feel like it is getting to be too busy, don't be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes having someone else making a couple of coordination calls and acting as an extra pair of eyes for a couple of minutes is all you need. It may also mean that you need to stop the departures off of ORD for a few minutes so you can get your airspace cleaned up and you can safely work the aircraft. It can sometimes seem like if you stop the departures you are waving the white flag, but in reality you have to keep your position under control. Its not like you stopped the departures for the rest of the day, it is usually for about 3 to 5 minutes at most.

On the departure positions we are responsible for blending the ORD and satellite traffic to the center. One thing that we can do is ask the satellite controller to approve any releases with us. A good satellite controller should be aware of what the departure controller has for traffic and make that decision on their own, but it doesn't mean that they always do. It isn't always on purpose either. They are human and make mistakes as well.

I think that I am finally ready to control on my own. I need to remember all that I have learned over the past year of training, and to just sit down and work the traffic. I know I am fully capable of everything, and I feel that I have seen enough crazy situations that I can make the best judgement call if I do need to "wing it". No matter what happens, it is my position and I have to be in total control of it. We all work as a team, but I can't assume that the other controllers will do what I think they will do nor can I expect them to know what I need. The success or failure of my sector is ultimately the responsibility myself and no one else.

soooo.....seem like life is repeating itself all over again....when i first applied to be an atc in jan '08, i was pregnant, waiting on the referral list for pubnat 1{thats right pubnat 1, I am the original stuckmic not a controller not even a pilot and i have no life member!!!!}

anyway, was waiting to hear about an interview location while i was pregnant, was spazzing about having to go okc while pregnant blah blah blah and boom! got an interview offer for ZDC....well you know what happened from there and the rest is history....

fast forward to 2009, holy hell, im pregnant AGAIN and now panels are supposed to be coming up again in jan-march.....im due in march....so is this universe's way of torturing me kinda? does the powers that be have a sick sense of humor??? AND i'll be 30 in july 2010....time is closing in on me quick....just thought id throw this our there, it seems kinda funny to me.....lmao....

Well...I just finished up ETG's on two radar positions. I was training on Departure North and Tomball. Tomball is a satellite radar position and Departure North handles all departures from all of the Houston area airports that are going north bound.

Tomball was a bit harder than North because nothing was standard. On Tomball, you have six different airports aircraft will depart from or arrive to...overflights, and lots of VFR aircraft wanting to do many different things. You have to know the types of approaches to all the airports as well as all the departure procedures for each airport so you know how to get the aircraft on its' way.

The busiest airport that Tomball sequences aircraft to is David Wayne Hooks (DWH). It is actually an FAA VFR Tower, level 7. We also have another controlled airport we sequence to, Lonestar Executive (CXO). For the busiest ETG problems you will have at least 3 aircraft inbound to DWH and about 2 or 3 aircraft inbound to CXO as well as overflights at various altitudes, arrivals into other satellite airports, and departures off of IAH, DWH, and CXO. In order to pass the ETG you cannot have any operational errors or deviations. Overall...after all the problems you run up until the graded runs by a supervisor prepare you pretty well for the graded run. I felt pretty confident going into all of them and did really well....

North Departure is a lot different than Tomball. When you work North Departure everything is so standard...until weather comes in. In the ETGs you only get to do one weather problem and believe me, it is a bear. For North, you have five points that aircraft will head to on a departure procedure depending on what their destination is. All you have to do is climb the aircraft and turn them towards that point....seems easy? Not so much...before you can climb and aircraft, you have to make sure you aren't going to hit anyone else...there are many areas that you can run over another controller's aircraft so you really have to be on your toes...especially when it starts to get busy.

There are many traps that can get you into a lot of trouble if you don't watch it. We use Pre-Arranged Coordination Procedures (P-ACP). That means we can enter another controllers airspace without pointing our aircraft out or handing them off to that controller. This can be very helpful...I90 couldn't run half the traffic it does without it; however, it makes it more difficult because you have to be really careful when using this.

Overall I did pretty good on the ETGs and passed them all. Now I will go out onto the floor and start working live traffic with a couple trainers that get assigned to me. Hopefully the ETGs have prepared me well enough for this!

So it is November and a lot has happened since my last update. I haven't been very good about keeping it up to date (obviously) but I will try and give an overview of everthing that has happened.

Flight Data

After getting out of the lab I started training on Flight Data. Although flight data is not the most glamourous position in the facility, it is still an important role to the entire operation. There are a lot of times when it is a rather slow position, but it provides for lots of good opportunities for studying, monitoring on the midnight scopes, or just hanging out with another controller who happens to be back there. It can get busy at times though. We are responsible for providing clearance delivery and route corrections for all of the uncontrolled airports within our airspace. As a funny side note, the two phone lines that the pilots call us on looking for releases are named the Bat phones. We also forward on PIREP information to flight service, record and forward NOTAM's, as well as collect the flight progress strips around the tracon every hour. One thing that we sometimes have to do is update the weather on the IDS4 if the automatic weather observations don't update on their own.

Flight data took about 3 weeks to fully certify. It requires a minimum of 8 hours, but the entire first week of training on Data was VFR weather so I didn't have any practice reading clearances to the uncontrolled airports. All of the pilots took off VFR and picked up their clearances in the air. The weather got a little worse the next week (which was good for me) so I was able to get lots of good practice reading the clearances. I finally certified and it was nice being able to work a position on my own, not to mention I was now somewhat, although still barely, useful.

VFR Advisories

VFR advisories is a position that is not normally open very often. It is, rather obviously, dependant on two main factors:
1) The weather is VFR
2) There are enough VFR aircraft looking for advisory services to warrant opening another position.
VFR advisories is typically open in the summer time when these conditions are more often met. We have this position open continuosly during the day during the Oshkosh weeks, because a lot of aircraft fly around Lake Michigan and need to transition our airspace to get up to Wisconsin. Chicago is a very busy Class B airspace, and we do not let VFR aircraft into the Bravo unless it is for a special circumstance. We have a small VFR corridor underneath the Bravo right along the shoreline that gets extremely busy with VFR traffic around Oshkosh. We also have a lot of traffic that flies above the Bravo, but that puts them in direct conflict with our departures and arrivals, depending on where they are. This is why we keep VFR Advisories open throught Oshkosh.

Fortunately for me, it was the beginning of summer when I started training on VFR advisories. I had already started doing some departure training after finishing Data. You don't have to actually have VFR done before you can start departures, which is a good thing because if you start in the fall or winter, you won't have any chance of VFR time until the next spring or summer.

VFR Advisories is fairly well explained by the name; it is traffic advisories for VFR aircraft in Chicago's airspace. It is very good practice for issuing traffic calls, because that is essentially all you do. As a person with no previous experience, I think it is a great way to start getting used to talking to pilots on a radio, learing the airspace, making traffic calls, learning aircraft types, and learning the ARTS keyboard entries.

It takes a little while to get used to hearing the GA pilots calling up, especially when they have not the best radios or when they have a loud engine that makes it hard to hear. Also, unlike on departures when you have a strip and a tagged up data block in front of you telling you who is calling, the pilots call up at arbitrary times with no prior warning. One of the hardest things is hearing the callsign properly and being able to type it into the keyboard in a timely fashion, as well as writing a strip on the aircraft.

I was very fortunate to also have to opportunity to train during Oshkosh. Most people get checked out on VFR with very minimal traffic, so they are somewhat swamped when they actually do get to work the Oshkosh traffic on their own. One thing that you can control is the number of aircraft that you will give services to, and then tell anyone else who calls "Unable due to traffic". However, you don't want to only work one aircraft and tell everyone else unable either. My checkride was during Oshkosh and it was, in the words of my supervisor, the "busiest VFR checkride (he) ever watched". It is really nice to have this under my belt because first it is a raise, but it is one step closer to the final goal of being fully checked out. Also, there are many important skills that transfer over to the other sectors that I started to learn on this position.

Departures

Currently I have 154 hours on departures. In October, I went through the Phase II lab, where I work on being able to handle a larger volume of aircraft on my own, as well as being able to handle the unusual situations on my own as well (missed approaches, emergencies, weather deviations, etc...). I feel like I am doing fairly well so far, but I still have about 100 hours to go. Once departures is done, it will be the second pay raise, but more importantly it is another step closer to being fully checked out.

Well, this week, more of the same stuff...lots of ETGs, at least 3 per day. It has been pretty fun, but I'm beating myself up a little because I keep messing up stupid things that I should be getting at this point. Overall, I think I am doing fairly well. Just need to keep working on my phraseology and learn my airspace a little bit better.

We just started running our scenarios. They rank the scenarios in difficultly by percentage points. We ran the slowest problem which was a 50%. At first it didn't seem that slow, but it is just to help us get the basics of vectoring, phraseology, and airpspace down. Once we get this down, we will bump it up to a higher percentage.

In order to get out on the "floor" (radar room) we must pass three graded problems. A 50%, 60%, and 70%. In order to pass these problems you must have no deviations or operational errors. If you have one, you fail and have to conduct remedial training. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Towards the end of the week we got to run a 75% practice problem and it was quite a bit busier than I had anticipated. Just a few extra aircraft make a big difference in the complexity.

Me and a few others are back in the trailers for more classroom training. We are learning two radar positions. It is a lot of self-study...we get a powerpoint presentation here and there and that's about it. A few days into the week, we have a few tests to take about the material we learned and then we get to start doing ETGs (Radar Simulations) on the positions we just took the class on.

That's about all we did this week....we did have a chance to get back in the ETGs and run a problem just for fun. That was cool, but a little overwhelming at first. It is a lot different learning something and then trying to put it to use.