MHT-OSH, EAA Day 1

Saturday, July 23

I woke up at 4:45am and reported to work for my "Friday" shift around 5:45am. I was angst-y. I hadn't had a day off in a while. Summer traffic was in full force. Recall a few posts I made earlier.....

1:45pm arrived as soon eight hours would allow itself, and I gave work nary a rearview glance. I packed my bags, made sure I had all of my necessary camera/iPod/cell phone accessories, and gave my cats a sorrowed expression that told them it would be a while; feel free to take a nap or two, kitties.

I left around 5pm.

Rule number one when roadtripping: Don't be in a rush. What's the point of stressing out on vacation? Just chill. So I took Route 9 through Keene, NH and Bennington, VT. There is nothing like a nice, mostly quiet, curvy road through New England to get a road trip started right. The first night was spent near the Albany, NY Airport. Time to get some sleep....

Sunday, July 24

I slept well and left around 9am. I am a big fan of the Mohawk River valley on a nice sunny summer morning. The water is calm, the trees are green, the old, rusty Erie Canal infrastructure is interesting, and there tends to be enough trains along the CSX mainline to keep me excited. A solid 8 hours of driving rewarded me with a dinner date, so to speak, with everyone's favorite Cleveland Center controller, SK!!! The Feve, in Oberlin, is highly recommended for lunch or dinner, although the company may make everything better than reality. On second thought, any place that makes tater tots about 10 different ways is always a winner.

After some hearty interfacility ATC banter, I was on my westward way again, sun visors in the down position. I gained an hour just before pulling into my hotel near Gary, IN around 11pm.

Monday, July 25

I love it when a plan comes together. And Monday's plan was ambitious.

One of my best friends from high school, Erik, was flying into Midway airport from Denver on Southwest at 10:35am. So I left my hotel at 9:30am, hopped on the Chicago Skyway, and cut through the south side of town on 59th St. I parked in short term parking, met Erik in the baggage claim, and we were northbound on Cicero Ave by 10:50am....

We stopped for a quick bite to eat and then met another high school friend, NJ (controllers are initials only), for a tour of ORD tower at noon. A friend from college (JR) was working north local and pushing tin quite impressively. JR was departing and arriving 9R, departing 4L. Another controller was departing 32L from T10 in between the 9R arrivals, and another controller was arriving and departing 10, arriving 4R. Truly a sight to behold. One of many to come....

After a few hours of that, NJ, Erik, and I got a late lunch/early dinner at a local Chicagoland joint. We beat the traffic north into Wisconsin, arriving in Oshkosh around 6pm.

We rented a house from a very hospitable family who lived near the lake on the northeast side of town. The bus ran right down the street. We bought our tickets for the airshow online. Everything was all set.

Tuesday, July 26th

Tuesday was the second day EAA was open, but our first. It was 85 degrees, severe clear, light winds. Perfect.

We caught the bus at 7:15am. We were under the impression that ALL the buses ran until 11pm the week of EAA. Wrong. Only the EAA bus to and from downtown runs that late. The rest of the town stops at 6:30pm. Oh well, we'll worry about that later and figure out alternate plans for the next few days. We transferred downtown to the EAA bus and it spit us out next to the main entrance. I was surrounded. I was overwhelmed. I had a grin on my face that was starting to hurt :)

At first there are campers and trailers as far as the eye can see. Then there are people as far as the eye can see. And then there are airplanes as far as the eye can see.



We exchanged our online tickets for wrist bands and entered the sprawling airport/fairground. At ground level, there are immediately vendors everywhere. Cessna, Pilatus, Beechcraft, Cirrus, etc have acres of grass carpeted static displays of their latest and greatest offerings.

In the sky, there are constantly airplanes flying around in various attitudes, speeds, and formations.




Next time I go...I'm riding the Tri-Motor. I'd regret not going up this time, but there was plenty else to see....







The three of us became a group of 5 when we met up with my good friend Sam and his father. You may have read a little about it here. After watching a Q&A with Bob Hoover (it was Bob Hoover Day, after all) we strolled around the Warbirds area for the rest of the morning. Some DC-3s were parked there, too.









We got some lunch and then split up for the afternoon. The rows and rows of airplanes seemingly went on forever and I never got sick of the variety. NJ and I would tease Erik with "look, another green slash this big (two fingers an inch apart) on the scope, hahaha." Erik fixes and installs avionics on actual airplanes for a living, so he wasn't as impressed with seeing the planes in real life as certain radar controllers were.

We set up just north of midfield for the afternoon airshow. It started a little late due to an incident involving an F18 overshooting the runway. Once the firetrucks and personnel were back in their appropriate places, the craziness began...

The Navy is celebrating their 100th year of flight this year and so the EAA attempted to fly every plane the Navy ever flew over OSH airport simultaneously without crashing into anything. They mostly succeeded.

There were at least 100 airplanes flying various patterns over the field. The choreography was excellent, as it really conveyed the sense of chaos that a Vietnam-era skirmish would emit.



I couldn't capture it with the wide angle, but there were planes EVERYWHERE low level, and what seemed like hundreds of planes in formation flying overhead in four directions.

At the end of said demonstration, one of the rare early Vietnam jets also ran off the end of the runway, narrowly avoiding the F18 which was tail up in the grass from earlier in the day. Everyone was OK, and a sigh of relief was heard throughout Oshkosh. This was followed by an aerobatic helicopter. I was a little disturbed by the sounds being made by the short, twirling blades cutting through the air at unnatural angles.

This was quickly followed by some stunning airmanship by Sean Tucker and the Shell Aerobatic Team. I am still speechless about this. (Sam has some really good pics on his blog of the airshow from his vantage point).

The grand finale was when a bunch of pilots who aren't as skilled as Bob Hoover tried to recreate the same maneuvers that made Bob Hoover famous. The lackluster performance proved the greatness of Bob Hoover. Success!

Afterwards, we meandered our way south to the Vintage rows where Sam had his C170 parked. The sun was slowly setting, and we took up a comfortable seat under its wing. At this point, the airport was "open" again, and we had a front and center view near the departure end of Runway 36L/R (the right side is actually a taxiway most of the year). Reduced separation is used for departures. Instead of 3000-6000 feet between departures, most aircraft at EAA are only required 1500 feet. This results in a departure being launched off each of the three runways about every 15 seconds. Departures off of 36L/R would immediately turn out to the southeast (remaining south of runway 9) over the lake and would slowly diverge on course, often with faster climbing planes right on top of lower slower planes. Everything was visual. Planes were also departing runway 9 and turning northeast and west. The math is staggering: Each runway would depart one airplane every 15 seconds on average. That's 4 departures per minute. Times 3 runways. 12 planes per minute would depart OSH. Times 60 minutes = over 700 departures an hour. Ok, so lets say its a little less than once every 15 seconds. 500 ops per hour? It kept up steady and ridiculous for over two hours.

As the sun set, Sam went off to get a weather briefing for his proposed early morning departure the next day. NJ, Erik and I ended up at the Vintage Restaurant for a fancy sit down meal in the open tent watching dusk colors fade into airplane strobe flashes lighting up the night sky.

We took the EAA shuttle back to the downtown bus stop and called a taxi. Also waiting for a taxi was our newest friend: A hilarious and partially intoxicated Australian first officer for Qantas Airlines. He flew from Sidney to LAX and then connected a few times en-route to Wisconsin. The four of us shared the cab, which eventually arrived, since this Aussie was trying to get half way between downtown and our rental house. We picked up as much of his cab fare as he'd allow and found ourselves back at the house, not really all that tired, by 11:15pm.

An amazing day I'll never forget. I'm still smiling!

Till next time....

DM

I would make a horrible photojournalist....

I repeat: I would make a horrible photojournalist. It has been over two months since I took my EAA Oshkosh vacation. I am just now in a position to tell you how freaking awesome it was. I can show you, as well. It was overwhelming then. The mortal life that I returned to back here in NH was less than I could have desired. It is less overwhelming now.

I was in, for a year and a half, a fantastic relationship with a smart, funny, amazingly beautiful girl who I honestly could see myself with for a LONG time. By the time I left for my vacation two months ago, it had become obvious that who I was, and, most notably, my strengths as a person and a controller, had become nothing but a list of inadequacies. My decision to end what had become such an unfortunate circumstance took little time to justify in my own mind but the process of re-establishing my own emotional confidence, so that I could sit here at home and tell you a fun and/or interesting story with enthusiasm regarding my work, was much more gradual.

So here I am, back with you all. Life has stabilized. But with regards to what I'd like to share with you, I am a little backlogged.

Over the next few days, I hope to give you some recap of my experience in Wisconsin this past summer. I had a great time, and I have no idea why it took me so long to go......



Till next time....

DM

EAA - A week not working for the FAA

I am moments away from setting off to Wisconsin for EAA AirVenture 2011. I will be on the scene from Tuesday to Friday, wearing a fabulously nerdy NAS CONFUSION T-shirt with the video map of the Albany Sector on the back. If you see me, feel free to introduce yourself. I'm friendly in real life, don't worry.

If you are going to Oshkosh, or not, please join me in wishing everyone involved (especially those flying) a fun and safe week.

Till next time...


DM

Losing the flick ; Losing my freq

It's the first session of the day. I'm told to plug in at the Utica/Watertown combined sector as a Tracker. My job, as the third set of eyes, will be to make some phone calls if necessary and to do the typing. I take a seat in front of the scope, fingers on the keyboard at the ready. I am actually the fourth set of eyes, as there is Radar training-in-progress. The training team has just taken a boat-load of handoffs and they are starting to check in. Some of you may remember this map from before:


Green is level traffic, Red is descending aircraft and Blue are climbing aircraft. It looks like a mess, but the main flow of traffic is level or climbing towards SYR VOR on the west side of the sector. There is quite a lot of westbound traffic at this moment, and I'm growing concerned. There are two very well placed thunderstorms in our sector, as shown as elongated north-south green ovals here:



The bold black lines show how the deviations will unfold. Planes don't fly through thunderstorms for good reason. Everyone's workload increases. Planes are now checking in three at a time from the CAM sector to our east already deviating around one storm, getting bumpy rides, and asking for something other than "direct SYR when able" (the last sector gave them that not realizing there was another storm at SYR). The trainee needs to kick it up a notch (and so do I, frankly) as the frequency is now completely full of nonstop chatter about turbulence, altitude requests, weather deviation requests, needs for shortcuts, etc. A few ALB departures check in, and they need a westbound turn to miss the first storm. They are cleared to do so, but as they make their turn to SYR, they realize there is a storm there. Planes are keying up their mic's at the same time and there is a frustrating moment of squealing and garbling in my ear. I take that moment to look for something better to do.

All of these westbound flights are going to deviate left of course into RKA's airspace, so I make the keyboard entry to force a full datablock onto their scope for as many planes as I can. But the Radar is giving climb clearances, and I'm struggling to keep up. I'm rushing to put in the step climb inputs.

INT 320 439 ENTER

INT 300 032 ENTER

"amend altitude, maintain FL260, deviate left of course, Buffalo when able"

INT 260 876 ENTER

QS DL/BUF 876 ENTER

Crap, since he's stopped under RKA's airspace, he'll need a pointout to DNY sector instead. I get the D-side to do that, pointing frantically at datablock....

PVD 24 876 ENTER

Uh, what just happened? Who was that climb for?

I hear numbers in my head, but I'm not getting complete information and I don't know what to do about it.

The instructor has taken over at this point and is now talking even faster. This is one impressive rush of planes in the middle of our scope now. The trainee needed to ramp up his speech rate and overall speed, but didn't. He was still cruising down a dirt road in Kansas in his rusty ole' pick-up truck, takin' it slow to avoid the rumblings of the washboard. I was right there sitting next to him in the passenger seat, barely keeping up. Now we're on the autobahn, in HV's Porsche. Oh crap, what on earth is going on. I think I'm 6 transmissions behind now. Airplanes are climbing, but the data blocks don't reflect it. No one has time to let me catch up. The planes are still moving, they're going left around the storms no matter what. Every plane that we have requires at least four of the following: a climb, a stopped climb for crossing traffic, a turn for traffic, a weather deviation and the amendment to the datablock so Cleveland knows what they are doing, a pointout to RKA or DNY sector, and a handoff. An arm keeps reaching around me to use the trackball.... At least someone knows what is going on.

My D-side is helping me catch up, too, but other sectors are calling both of us because I'm not taking handoffs from them, or they have their own traffic that they need to pointout to us.....

I'm typing as fast as I can, but it isn't fast enough. I'm not hearing callsigns very clearly, so I don't know which plane got that last clearance. Holy crap, the planes are everywhere.

My Radar controller says:
"Delta xxxx, for traffic climb and maintain FL380, deviate left of course, direct YWT VOR when able."

I type:
ALT 380 739 ENTER
QS DL/YWT 793 ENTER

The D-side puts in QU YWT 793 ENTER to take out all the intermediate, and now obsolete, fixes in the flightplan.

PVD 10 793 ENTER
C 793 ENTER


"793" (the three numbers before ENTER) is the computer code for that airplane. I changed the altitude, put "DL/YWT" (deviate left, YWT vor when able) in the fourth line of the datablock, pointed the plane to Sector 10 (RKA) and flashed the plane on to Cleveland Center. That is one plane taken care of, 26 more to go.

All these planes want FL340-380 as a final altitude. You could cover 8 of them with a fingertip, and your hand would be surrounded by 10 others. Not too many planes are coming the other way at odd altitudes eastbound, so we start using those, too, as a temporary I'm-running-out-of-altitudes move. (We generally keep westbound planes at even thousands (FL360 FL320 etc), and eastbound planes at odd thousands (FL310 FL370 etc)).

Since I'm spending all my time catching up, my D-side is trying to keep the datablocks apart in his spare time, while not taking phone calls from everyone around him. Not sure exactly what is going on over there. I'm not sure exactly what is going on in front of me on the scope either, for that matter. Uh, where was I?

I hear an Ottawa departure get a "Deviate right, when able direct EXTOL, J59"

As I type the QS DL/EXTOL I realize that when that plane comes around the west side of that storm at FL360, there is a definite conflict with another plane deviating around the south side that storm, also at FL360. I point, again frantically at the soon-to-be-imminent situation. It got the Radar controller's attention and he wisely descends the southbound plane to FL350.

INT 350 938 ENTER 10 938 ENTER

I look over at RKA's scope and motion to the plane now at FL350 and make sure they are OK with it. They start scanning for any conflicting eastbound planes already at FL350....there is a Hartford arrival out there in Cleveland's airspace....RKA's D-side makes the call to start an early descent into Hartford....They take the handoff from us.

Uh, what else is going on. I have no idea. A plane is climbing above the last altitude I put in for it a while back. Is that supposed to be happening? "Yah, I gave him 34"

INT 340 103 ENTER PVD 10 103 ENTER

Is he deviating yet?

"Yah, these four are."

PVD 10 303 ENTER PVD 10 993 ENTER PVD 011 ENTER Crap forgot the sector number.... The datablock drops off the scope when you forget the sector number. How stupid is that!

PVD 011 He's back.

PVD 10 011 PVD 10 644

I gotta put all the deviations in there too. Hey, D-side, do that, thanks!

Cleveland is getting overwhelmed now as we've begun to hand our mess off to them. I hope we weren't supposed to give them spacing. We went into survival mode and just made sure everyone was at different altitudes. Now that the big blob of planes is abeam the main SYR storm, we are trying to figure out how to get them to diverge a little so we can give them all even-thousand altitudes before they cross Cleveland's boundary. I'm still mostly confused and trying to catch up with my keyboard entries. Our D-side is all over it and points to each plane in order "JHW, Jossy, Peck, London" A vector or two and they're all laterally separated. They're quickly approaching the Cleveland boundary without a handoff so a few phone calls need to be made to sort it all out.

Stueben, Utica, 97 Line...........

------------------

I wish I could go into more detail, but I truly didn't have much of a clue as to what was going on. To say that I was out of breath and, at times, a little scared would be an understatement. I will note also that I do not believe that HV owns a Porsche. For keeping everyone separated for that half hour someone should get him one!

------------------

So, there is a thunderstorm over SYR. Thus, TMU is rerouting planes that would not normally fly over SYR through our sector over SYR. I know this doesn't make any sense, but apparently since we didn't kill anyone before we must be able to handle anything.

Since more planes are coming, and the storms are growing, it is determined that we should split Watertown and Utica sectors up. This does not happen very often, and it tends to lead to some confusion. On the bright side, since we normally have both Watertown's and Utica's frequencies on at the same time, and since different sectors put planes on different frequencies, splitting the sectors means that planes won't talk all over each other without knowing it. Planes sometimes end up on the wrong frequency, but at least they can only talk one at at time.

So, the training team and my D-side went across the aisle open up Watertown sector. I was left to chill at Utica. A nice, simple, high altitude sector with a thunderstorm slowly moving eastbound. Watertown sector owns below me and all the airspace north of me. I now own just a rectangular shaped sector, FL310 and above, as shown below:



Many of the planes comprising the next rush of traffic ended up below FL300, so the move to split the sectors worked out well. I was still a little distraught over my still-fresh-in-my-mind performance as a Tracker. Well, at least I had everything under control now. In the rarefied air above FL310, I had a much more manageable number of airplanes and was able to keep up an enjoyable pace.

Cah-SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

What the hell is that? It comes out over the speakers. I hear it in my earpiece. My lone frequency, plus the UHF emergency frequency light up orange as if they are being transmitted on. What the......?

I ask someone how their ride is. No response. I issue a new frequency for a plane entering Cleveland Center. No response. Does anyone hear me? No response.

Sigh.

I attempt to switch to my standby frequencies. It won't let me. How about the Back-Up Emergency Channel (BUEC - yes, lots of car references tonight). Ok, that works. Sort of. It always sounds like a tin can. But, tonight it's especially tin-ey. After a few transmissions it sounds like someone else is keying up at the same time as I am. There is a buzzing, whirring sound as if someone has a stuck mic. But no one does. The planes can hear me enough.... Half of my planes get sent to RKA's frequency. I get Cleveland to take the handoff's early on a few more and switch them over. The rest are fine for now. They are deviating but are altitude separated. So much for the benefit of having one frequency to myself.

I'm told I should try to switch back to my main transmitters. It won't let me. I have no frequency. They must have been struck by lightning. I need to stop blogging about how much I love or hate data-link. I must have jinxed myself. CAM sector is flashing me 4 airplanes. I tell that controller to hold on them for a while. I don't have a frequency right now. I get a puzzled look over the land line. Time to combine Watertown back up with Utica and use Watertown's frequency. I broadcast to everyone left on my frequency to change over to Watertown. Once they all check in across the room, we start the process of combining the sectors back together at the scope where I am sitting. They aren't done training yet so it is now my break. I will take it, thank you. Gotta get ready for the remaining 6 hours of my shift. Anything could happen.

Till next time....


DM

Thrown, for a loop....

I am not ignoring you. Don't worry.

I have a lot of things I could be blogging about since the last few weeks have been complete chaos due to the weather and higher volumes of traffic after Labor Day.

However, I can't bring myself to relive those stressful moments during my breaks or over my weekend. Its been that bad, especially on Thursdays.

Here is a flightaware.com sampling from this evening:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N567MC/history/20110623/1930Z/KUES/KFRG

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL590/history/20110623/1843Z/KORD/KBDL

Planes were deviating around and/or staying high to top the thunderstorms in the middle of my sector at Rockdale and then when they finally could start down they were too high to meet their normal restrictions. Sometimes other planes got in the way...among other issues.....

It all seemed hellish, hectic, borderline out-of-control. And that feeling didn't go away for over three hours. In the end, though, what was left were some pretty little loops to admire and share with you. Sorry to the pilots and passengers... Storms happen.

Till next time...

DM

Data-Comm Continued

My last post started a discussion. I continued thinking about what I wrote and how I feel about what I wrote. My guess is that if you are very involved selling data-link to the government you would not invite me to your party. And that is a shame, because I want it, and I'd like to help you make it work for me as a controller. I know it doesn't seem like there's room in this world for moderation or flip-flopping or whatever. As a safety minded controller, I just came right out of the gate with two good reasons not to dismantle the air-ground radios we use now. I may have prefaced it all with "this is why data-link isn't getting off the ground", but I digress.

Data-link (text messages to flight decks) should be expanded beyond the current use of issuing route clearances to airliners at major airports. But it shouldn't be the only form of communications available. Can we afford voice and data-link? Can we afford not to have both? Can we have this conversation?

Let me give you two situations where data-link would really help:

1 - A plane is flying along and has a radio failure. We exchange clearances via text message. YAY!

2 - An Iberian A340 is flying westbound to Ohare through my sector. There are storms over central and southern Michigan. All Ohare traffic is now being rerouted. Have you ever tried to issue a long reroute to a pilot that speaks English as a third language when your sector has 25 other planes in it? How about the other 6 Ohare arrivals in my sector? It sure would be nice to say "American 734, American 12, Emirates 866, Iberian 38, United 792, Eagle Flight 3941, and Flagship 7833, there is a reroute to Ohare, please check your printer, thank you, acknowledge with an ident". And my D-side highlights those planes in his URET, types SYR..YWT..TVC..GRB..MSN.BULLZ1.KORD, SEND. Roger that. Eliminating all repeats on routing clearances would be VERY nice.

And now that that ball is rolling, there are other things that would be nice to see in the 21st century. My D-side could select "send route as displayed in URET". There could be a "Contact Center on (whatever sector has track control's frequency)" button" When a message is sent, the datablock would indicate that somehow, and then change when the message is received. We'd only need to send one message to each plane at a time since we still have voice communications as a primary way to issue clearances.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the comments so far.

Till next time....


DM

Time Out - NextGen Ramblings

Apparently, we skipped spring and jumped right into summer. Every single shift this past week was a doozy, and I've resorted to a triage of sorts to decide if any of it is blog-worthy. So far, I've been distracted by the latest article at the Praxis Foundation (link on the right).

I'd like to talk to you about "data-link communications."

Some older controllers in my area dismiss the whole thing; Data-link has been "imminent" for 15 years. That may be the case. As a member of the newer generation of controllers, I'm not afraid of change for changes sake. But, even I can't see this integral part of NextGen getting off the ground. Here is why:

1 - What is the last thing you want your bus driver/airline pilot/train engineer doing when you're sitting in the back with your life in their hands? Texting on the cell phone, right? Data-link is texting while driving. A message is received, and one or both pilots have to put their head down and read the message, and then presumably, they have to text someone back that they received the message. Currently, pilots respond on the radio by holding down a button, either on the control stick or nearby in an easy to reach spot (see picture below, arrow points to a little red button - push to talk). Left hand on the yoke, with one finger dedicated to talking on the radio, the right hand is on the throttle. Where in this cockpit would you put the screen to get ATC clearances? I say we keep the clearances in the headset so the eyes can stay focused out the window looking out for things like other airplanes, weather, mountains and/or the runway.



2 - As pilots fly around, they often ask controllers if there is any turbulence ahead. Sometimes this comes off as annoying, but at least when we answer the first call "light to moderate turbulence from FL310 to FL360, everything gets smooth west of SYR", others around hear it, and can simply request FL380 without further conversation. Granted, pilots sometimes stop listening after someone else's call sign is used.....

There are many benefits to having everyone on one frequency together. Pilots hear turbulence reports, as I've mentioned, but they also get a sense of how busy the controller is to a certain extent. They hear about weather deviations, they hear holding instructions and other delays. From personal experience, "verify you are declaring an emergency?" is the quickest way to shut everyone up.

If everyone just got the messages meant for them, they would have NO IDEA what is going on around them. Situational Awareness would be significantly sacrificed. This is a clear case of safety taking a back seat to supposed gained efficiency. This issue would be much more magnified in the Terminal environment around and on the airport.

Obviously, this is a much more significant issue for single pilot operations, of which airline flying generally isn't subject, but I would assume pilots try to spend as little time as possible with their head down entering data into their flight management computers (or being distracted by burnt out landing gear light bulbs....). Lets not encourage them to take a 40 year step back in safety.

Till next time...


DM

Crossing Traffic

It always strikes me as odd how the same airline will file different routes to the same place, often causing their aircraft to cross paths. The most common example that I have noticed are the BDL/ALB/BTV flights going to MSP. On more than one instance, the BDL (most south) flight ends up taking a routing north of Lake Ontario, the ALB (middle) flight takes a more direct (and most often flown) route over Waterloo (the one in Canada, YWT), and the BTV (most northern departure point) will head southwest over Buffalo and Milwaukee. Being oddly curious about things that don't really matter, I have wondered which flight got there first. Here are two recent examples where I have remembered to keep a copy of the strips so I could look them up on the fabulous flightaware.com (thanks flightaware!) after my shift.

DELTA

Two Delta flights departed Albany and Bradley bound for Atlanta on a Friday afternoon. There were some thunderstorms around, but there wasn't an official weather reroute in effect at the time.

DAL1913 departed Bradley (BDL) first, at 1:09pm, with a flight plan filed over upstate NY to central PA and south over West Virginia. DAL1023 departed Albany (ALB) a few minutes later at 1:12pm flight planed over NJ, eastern PA, overhead DC and then over the Carolinas. Both flights usually fly the eastern route that DAL1023 flew. Both flights' targets merged over the ACOVE intersection just south of ALB, as you see below, and the race was on. DAL1913 was about 2000 feet higher than the DAL1023.

The first flight to arrive was DAL1023, which flew the normal routing to Atlanta (and appears to have deviated around some storms over Maryland), at 3:26pm. Two minutes in-trail was DAL1913, arriving one or two planes back in sequence at 3:28pm.



REPUBLIC (BRICKYARD)

A few days ago, I was sitting in the D-side at Utica and we had two E-170s tied over SYR, both requesting FL360. RPA3305 had departed Montreal (YUL) at 7:47am and RPA3124 who departed Ottawa (YOW) at 7:53am, both bound for Charlotte (CLT). My R-side gave the Ottawa departure, who was a few thousand feet lower in the climb, a vector to the east behind the Montreal departure.

The Montreal departure had filed the normal routing over central PA, West Virginia and and then onto the CLT arrival from the northwest. The Ottawa departure filed Syracuse direct to Roanoke, VA for a different arrival route from the northeast. As strange as this was, it was a Saturday morning, so we simply vectored the Ottawa flight east a little and gave him direct Roanoke, which allowed both flights minimal delay up to FL360 once we had crossed them out and established them on perfectly parallel routes.

Something happened half way to CLT, though. The Montreal departure, who was now west of the Ottawa departure, got massively vectored back east and put well behind the Ottawa departure on the arrival route from the northeast. After all was said and done, RPA3124 (YOW) arrived first at 9:48am, and RPA3305 (YUL) arrived at 9:55am. I'm not sure what happened, as this reroute occurred well beyond my airspace, but I can only assume the YUL departure would have arrived first if nothing had been done, since the flight arrived only 7 minutes behind the other despite the extensive delay vectors.




Till next time...


DM

Show Off

The public suddenly has its eyes turned on the Air Traffic Controllers. Really?

There has always been something missing from this Blog, in my opinion. Examples of my actual job, unedited. When I have a fantastically busy session at HNK/DNY -- my perfect phraseology, creative crossing restrictions to ensure separation, subtle vectors when a crossing restriction won't work, my D-side calling New York to get control for lower on the ALB arrivals, delivering Area E some awesome looking in-trail -- I can't ask my supervisor for a recording of my frequency and land lines to upload here, and I can't take a quick screen shot from the Falcon program to show off to you how proud I am of the work that we all do on a daily basis. Giving you access to that information is a security risk, a violation of policy, and copyright infringement. And if you're not a pilot, you'll never get access into my building for a tour to see it all first hand. Instead, I do my best to explain what happened using rudimentary maps, some excellent Flightaware.com links, and my words. I appreciate all of you for following along and your comments and encouragement.

But there are people hovering. Folks just waiting for me to screw up. They're pretty sure I will; I'm human, after all. And when I do screw up there is a major possibility that what I have done, what I've said, and how horrible of a person I am, will be plastered all over the media-scape. Life really isn't fair, after all. I'm not allowed to share with you the 99.9999 percent positive aspects of my work with you here, or anywhere, but that .00001 percent may be used against my entire profession without rebuttal.

Perhaps what I want to show off to you all is too complicated, and people could be afraid of what they don't understand. But the point would be made. What I, and 15000 other air traffic controllers in the US, and tens of thousands more around the world do every day, cannot be explained to the general public in specific terms. And if the public can't understand the positive details, how can they judge us on the negative details?

So maybe we should stay locked up behind windowless doors and just do our work everyday in quiet perfection. Have we created an unfair expectation of ourselves because we do our jobs perfectly almost all the time? Have we silenced ourselves by focusing on undramatic things like "safety"? When the specifics of our rare mistakes are made public but we can't defend ourselves with details of our constant and habitual commendable actions but once a year, getting the flying public home in a safe and efficient manner, then we're loosing an unfair fight. The only thing that gets shown off is a negative image. But that isn't how I see my work at all. If only I could show you.

Till next time...


DM

Opportunitiezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There are a few things that are certain about Air Traffic Control as a career:

1 - The schedule is crazy. Whether I claim to like it or not, working two nights-three days, three nights-two days, or two nights-two days-mid is NOT healthy for humans. I think my best alternative would be working five night shifts, but I pretend to have a social life after my day shifts occasionally.

2 - This job is stressful. I have only recently realized what this means, although I'm not sure if has to do with the soulless, windowless room that I work in, full of computer air or the actual controlling of airplanes. Sometimes its none of the above, sometimes is some of the above, and sometimes its everything and I just want a month off.

The FAA begrudgingly throws money at us to make us stop complaining about how stressful it can be working a crappy schedule. But is that why we make decent money?

Apparently, money is supposed to make me less tired at 4am when I have ZERO airplanes and there is nothing to do but stare at a blank computer screen. Fun experiment: At 12am tonight, turn off all the lights in your house, except for a reading light nearby, sit in front of your computer screen, and stay up until 5:30am. Emailing, reading, phone calls, text messaging, listening to music and "cat naps" are not permitted. Did you make it? Nice job! Do that again every Friday night for the next 20 years. Act professional, stay awake, and quit your bitchin'.

So, I'd like to say that I'm glad this is something we can finally talk about. We have a problem that has not been addressed. Controllers are tired at 3am. Shocker. So instead of ignoring it until we get caught (oh, wait, we're talking about this because we DID get caught), lets do something about it that makes sense and helps us perform our jobs effectively 24/7. None of us like being really tired. Those of us that work the Mid tend to start our weekend off half-dead. This schedule is slowly killing all of us. So lets be open to change for the better. This is an opportunity to increase the safety of the NAS.

Also, I'd be willing to start a conversation about truth number 2 at any time. Stress seems to be something that controllers shrug off. Its an inside joke. But maybe there are ways we can make the stress screw us up less. I can feel it building sometimes, and I don't know what to do about it. Oh wait, I'm not supposed to talk about that. Sorry.

Till next time...

DM

That is all I have to say about this.

Oh. NERD ALERT: I read the entire Northeast US Airport Facility Directory (AFD) to stay awake one night. The preferred routes to the Cape were on page 444. Not sure if that is still true....(FAA related documents are approved reading).

Still There?

It is usually after 10pm. Or in a winter lull of traffic on a Saturday morning after 9am. Or because all of the sectors are open, even though all of the airports are snowed in. That happened a lot this winter. So, I only have one or two airplanes, or there is a gaggle of flights heading westbound into a strong headwind, and I'm just waiting for Cleveland to take some handoffs. The frequency is quiet. Nice and quiet.

"Still there?"

Ahh, the silence is broken. Most controllers just say "yup." Some say "unfortunately." A few throw down a sarcastic "nope." All are, frankly, unproductive use of the frequency.

Do I know who you are? Do you know who I am? None of these are rhetorical questions, but they are left un-asked most of the time.

Pilots: How about "Boston Center, (callsign), radio check"?

The question is being asked by a pilot who is concerned that they are lost in frequency land. If I answer "Yes" to the original question, then the pilot will assume all is well, even though he/she may be hundreds of miles from my sector, on the wrong frequency. If the pilot had called for Washington Center, for instance, I would have immediately known something was wrong and could attempt to remedy the situation. It's slow in my sector, after all, so I have plenty of time to make a phone call and find out where that pilot belongs. Who knows, that far away controller may be trying to call this pilot to issue a much-needed clearance.

Controllers: How about "affirmative, this is Boston Center, who is calling?"

I've been guilty of responding with a "depends, who are you?" Not exactly the most professional (see above), but my point is made.

Every transmission should have a purpose. "'still there?' 'Yup'" does not qualify as productive use of frequency.

Thank you.

till next time....


DM


PS. Yes, there are crazy, stupid things going on in the world, and I am intentionally ignoring them. It takes more effort that I can muster some days to focus on the task at hand, but I'm trying. I'm sure a few bloggers listed under adjacent sectors have answers to other questions you may have. For now, I'm still here...mostly.

Missing my Train

I've been traveling a lot lately, and work has been primarily focused on being an on-the-job-instructor. Its been quite the effort training my favorite trainee. He's come a long way; a few years ago, he was just a faithful reader of this blog, never imagining that he'd ever be assigned to my area. Now he's almost certified on all of his D-sides. So, other than that, there hasn't been much to write about.

Last week, though, I took a trip down to NYC on the train to visit my cousin and take a much anticipated tour of JFK Tower. The plan was to leave Sunday morning and come back Monday night. What was supposed to be 1-3 inches of snow overnight Saturday into Sunday turned out to be more like 1-3 inches an hour for a few hours. I managed to pull myself out of bed a little earlier than my dreary eyes would have cared for, and hit the road, bound for the train station about an hour away. The plows were not up that early, apparently, as I found myself driving 30-40 mph among a few early-bird tire tracks. By the time I was half way there, almost an hour had passed. I knew that there was another train about an hour later, but changing to that train would be more expensive. At this point, I was in a slow, single-file line, with plenty of fresh, powdery snow on either side of the trail the cars had created. I felt like I could drive a little faster and be OK in the lane I was in, but in shin-deep snow? I could probably make it. I have all wheel drive. Heck, I could maybe even make my train if I pushed it. But, I didn't push it. I accepted that I was much safer in the lane I was in, at the speed I was currently traveling. It might cost a little extra, and take more time, if I missed my train, but if I wrecked my car on the highway, my perspective would change drastically. Car repairs, injuries to myself and maybe others around me, and increased insurance premiums would make the extra hour, and costing about 35 dollars extra, seem rather petty. And so, in about three seconds of actual thought process, I made the simple decision to drive slower, keep my tires on concrete, and get to the station in one piece.

This is the same decision all air traffic controllers make about 10,000 times a day. Safety wins every time. Delaying aircraft costs time and money, we know that. But the alternative isn't really worth it for anyone, and it gets taken for granted. What are the chances that I would have crashed my car? If there was a remote chance, than I chose otherwise. Getting to NYC late is WAY better than never getting there. All the airplanes landing late is better than 99.9 percent of them landing on time and losing the other .1 percent. Although, what are the chances of you, or someone you know, being on that .1 percent of flights that never land at an airport intact? You don't have to answer that.

I'll just keep doing what I do best, and you just keep getting on airplanes and getting where you need to go in one piece. Deal.

Oh, so about JFK:

It was hazy, but there were lots of big airplanes.









Thanks to all the JFK controllers who let me hang out with them for half the afternoon! And thanks also for guiding me through the crawl space so I could get out onto the roof (of the administration wing that sticks out of the tower) to take these pics!

PS. A few miles after I decided there was no point in dangerously rushing to get to the train station, I reached the point where it had only been raining, and so we all could speed up and I got to the station with 2 minutes to spare! Lesson is the same. Safety first!

Till next time....

DM

Marginally Famous

It keeps snowing during my middle-of-the-week night shifts. What normally would be the busiest shifts have been the slowest. We're all mostly bored, quite frankly. The worst part is the 9am bang on the door the next day (after trudging home through the snow at 1am) to move my car for parking lot snow removal at my apartment complex. I like patterns, just not this weekly winter weather pattern. I like sleeping after my night shifts.

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I have never been to the EAA fly in at Oshkosh. So, this year, I am finally going. A bunch of my friends are going to rent a house and we're going to nerd out, airplane style, the entire last weekend of July in Wisconsin. I have been designing some NAS CONFUSION T-shirts to wear when I am there. This way you can recognize me and ask me questions about my little corner of the national airspace system (ZBW Area A). I wore one of my test designs to work yesterday and got mostly compliments. A few confused looks (appropriate), a few "ooohhhh jeeeezzzz", a couple of snarky comments, but mostly good reviews. Most people are dreaming of Florida, or the Carribean, or Hawaii or something when they are brushing the snow off their car. I am thinking about an airport in the Midwest in July. Hmmmmmm. I have issues.

I think my next main post will be a more complete rundown of the ALB sector. Un-deconstructed, if you will, compared to the previous post.

Since I have nothing of note going on in my ATC life, other than airports closed due to snow plows on the runway, I thought I would turn it back to you.
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Operationally permitting, of course, please send in your best (or worst) photos of winter operations, from the airplane/airport perspective. Sitting at the gate, airplane covered in snow? I'll take it! Climbing out through the tops of the overcast layer. Excellent! How about that 40 ft pile of snow on the edge of the ramp? Take a picture, claim that your bright pink C172 is buried under there. I might even post it here for all to see! You could become marginally famous!

It's time to embrace the winter wonderland. Email me pics (or videos even) to deltamike172@Hotmail.com .

Till next time...

DM

PS. Pictures with captions such as "Kalamazoo in a White Out" may or may not be accepted.

Differently Similar

I was sitting at Sector 22 (Albany - ALB) all day it seemed. If I wasn't on break, I was at Albany. And when I was at Albany, the same five planes seemed to fly through at the exact same time. Sure, there were a few other planes here and there, but they weren't in the way like these same five over and over.

I've talked about Albany before, but lets go over some basics first.


This is a simplified map of ALB sector. Lets go over some locations.
Each little circle is a VOR:
ALB - Albany, NY
CAM - Cambridge, NY
CTR - Chester, MA
BDL - Bradley (Hartford), CT
PWL - Pawling, NY
EEN - Keene, NH
DNY - Delancey, NY

The ALB sector is surround by 12 other Boston Center sectors, and completely overlays the Albany Approach Control, who owns 10000 feet and below. The northern half of the sector owns 11000 feet up to FL230 (23000 feet), and the southern half owns FL180 up to Fl230.

Sectors:
MPV - Montpelier Sector 52 owns from the ground to FL230.
CON - Concord Sector 37 owns from the ground to FL230.
GDM - Gardner Sector 36 owns from the ground to FL230.
BOSOX - BOSOX sector (named for an intersection used by Boston departures) owns 11000 up to FL230 (mostly).
Sector 20 is the IGN - Kingston Sector which owns FL200 and above (mostly).
Sector 05 (Stewart) and Sector 06 (Pawling) own 7000 up to FL190.
Sectors 23/24 (Hancock and Delancy, in my area discussed previously) owns mostly from the ground to FL270.
Sector 08/09 (Watertown and Utica, also in my area) owns from the ground to FL600.
Sectors 07 (Chester) and 21 (CANAN) are usually combined since they are so small, and they own 11000 to 17000 underneath ALB and parts of BOSOX.
Two Sectors not shown are CAM - Cambridge Sector 39 which owns above the northern half of the ALB sector FL240 and above. ATHENS Sector 38 owns above the southern half of the sector also FL240 and above.

Now that we have our bearings (I hope), lets talk about the airplanes.

Albany works primary flows of traffic that are pretty constant, but also many planes that are simply flying through randomly. The primary flows are EWR (Newark) area arrivals southbound over ALB, LGA (LaGuardia) area arrivals southbound to PWL, pretty much any other airport near New York City descending southbound, MHT (Manchester) arrivals eastbound to EEN, PVD (Providence) and ISP (Islip/Long Island) arrivals eastbound to a point just west of CTR called PONEE and then to BDL, BDL (Hartford) arrivals eastbound from Sector 24 descending into Sector 21, BDL departures over CTR to CAM, and ALB departures going northwest, west and south. The random traffic includes aircraft transitioning to and from the Mid Atlantic states going to northern New England, Montreal traffic, props going to and from the Boston area, Philly traffic going over DNY, and occasional military refueling missions. There is lots of variety. I love the ALB sector!

But out of all of these, there are really only five instances of total conflict, guaranteed. Figure One. Green lines are climbing, Red lines are descending.


ATHENS gives us MHT arrivals descending to FL240. Our job is to descend them to either FL190 or FL210, and hand them off to GDM-Sector 36. The main determining factor in which altitude we assign depends on BDL departures. Most of them fly over CTR and then go to CAM and then westbound to SYR (Syracuse, NY). A few go west over HNK, but the majority fly to CAM, and are almost always in the way of the MHT arrivals. As the BDL departures cross the MHT flow between CTR and CAM, they are usually climbing out of FL190 for FL230. So a decision must be made. Can I outclimb the MHT with the BDL? Or should I stop the BDL at FL200 and stop the MHT at FL210 and wait for them to pass before climbing the departure?

If I stop the BDL departure, I am increasing the chances that that aircraft will be low enough to later conflict with the other major flow in the sector: EWR arrivals.


If I can't climb the BDL departure right away, or they just climb slow anyways, they are usually in the way of the EWR arrivals just west of CAM as they turn towards SYR. The CAM sector will usually tell us to keep them on a northbound heading to go around the back of the EWR traffic, but sometimes they just get stuck underneath. This is bad. EWR traffic is usually cleared to cross ALB at 16000. As strange as it seems, EWR Traffic goes below the BDL arrivals which cross 15 miles south of ALB descending to FL180. Both EWR and BDL traffic are handed off to Sector 21 who then further descends them once they cross.

The BDL traffic is only one reason we are always pushing to EWR jets lower. Another reason are the southbound ALB departures. They come climbing off the airport on a northwest heading. They don't get to turn south until they outclimb the EWR and BDL arrivals, or we can squeeze them into gaps between. This is the best part of the ALB sector, in my opinion. Whether or not you have a three way scare just south of ALB is up to you. We can leave the departure on the northwest heading until they're out of FL190 and then turn them back south, or we can send them west and then circle them around a BDL, or we can crank them south to PWL right away and tell them to climb like they're life depends on it, narrowly cutting in front of a EWR jet. Sometimes we can push the BDL arrival below the EWR, and then we have a few thousand feet less to get clear. Each scenario is different.

And yet, as I spend my whole day at Albany, the fact that I keep getting five planes at the same time is getting really old, really fast. The BDL departure departs, the EWR arrival is handed off to me descending quickly to meet the restriction from CAM sector, I get a departure message for a southbound ALB departure, here comes the MHT arrival turning direct EEN, and lo and behold, a BDL arrival screaming in from the west. It takes me 6 minutes to work it all out, 11 transmissions in total, and I am left with no airplanes for a few minutes. I may work a few stragglers here and there. The JFK-Burlington Jetblue, an Air Canada south to LGA, and/or a northwest ALB departure, but all of them are route separated. But once those are through, I take my five handoffs again and 6 minutes later 500 people are safely on their way.

After three or four instances of this, I start noticing a pattern. And so after my next break, the pattern continues. Five planes, three conflicts, six minutes, eleven transmissions, moving on with my life. The monotony is broken when one of the BDL departures turns left at CTR and heads to Pittsburgh via HNK. He's not in conflict with the MHT (yay!), but now he and the ALB departure are climbing up to Fl230 converging just north of PWL. Sigh. Who's climbing faster? Both are climbing about the same. I analyze it a few seconds more. I turn the ALB departure a little left to go behind the BDL departure and coordinate the change with ATHENS, giving them control to turn him back to PWL when they pass. And then I'm left with nothing. Waiting for my next break, or five airplanes, whichever comes first.

Till next time...

DM

PS. The moral of the story: Manchester arrivals need to land, but it isn't that urgent. So we try to get our Bradley departures as high as we can so we can get our Newarks down quick so we have a chance to get our Bradley arrivals down and our Albany departures up and on course.

PPS. We also have a pretty nasty conflict at FL210 just west of CTR. It usually involves New York Metro departures at FL210 going to Burlington or Montreal and the PVD/ISP flow descending to FL190 to BDL. If the BDL departure is going over CTR to HNK, plus throw in a LGA arrival southbound to make you reconsider vectoring someone to the west, and BOSOX has a plane climbing a little higher that departed PVD westbound to HNK, it can get ugly, in a multidimensional way. But this happens maybe once or twice a day at the most, not four or five times an hour. So I didn't include this :) Oh wait, I just did!

Where have I been?

Everywhere and Nowhere.

My focus has been on everything except this blog. That is just how it has to be sometimes. I have a post or two patiently perched in the pending bay, so stay tuned. I just have to work on some of my awesome Windows Paint diagrams!

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A few days after my "operational error", the subject of my last post (the whole thing is printed up and tacked up to the wall in my area at work, by the way, and I am asked "are you in a groove?" on a daily basis, still), one of the controllers in my area had a medical issue (not at work) which caused him to spend a few days in the hospital. When he was released, he stopped by work to find out the status of his medical certificate. He looked fantastic and well rested. It made me think about the working conditions we subject ourselves to. It made me think about spending the next 20 or more years of my life working in an environment in which having a heart attack and spending a few days in the hospital is an improvement.

So that is where I have been: Pondering the meaning of life and where ATC fits into mine. I have determined that I will never find another job that I truly love 95 percent of the time, even if it kills me slowly. The schedule is crazy, and yet, I would never want a daily morning commute. It is occasionally stressful, yes, and constantly rewarding. For someone who strives to learn something new everyday, I'd say I've got enough to learn about the NAS to last me a lifetime.

Yup, I'm still here. And I'm in a groove.

Till next time...


DM

PS. The medically disqualified controller is helping with training in the simulators. I hope to take advantage of that by spending some time working fake traffic with strips just like the good old days that I barely knew as an A-side the first few weeks after I arrived at Boston Center. No, really. I'm a nerd.