Flight simulator ATC youtube videos. :)
 

Holy smokes.
Once again, I might be late to the party, but these videos came up in my youtube feed today,

I'm laughing so hard it hurts.

Here's one. They are endless. Edit- if this is how Boston handles things, d#$ if I'm flying there again! :)

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The phraseology is making me lose color vision.

Obviously- to a real pilot like yourself, it's pretty lame. :D The dichotomy (to me) in a lot of these videos- not necessarily this one, is that some people are taking the game uber seriously, and then all hell breaks loose from some far corner of a drunk teenager.

This, and the flight simulator x thread makes me want to go upgrade my computer and go fly. I haven't used flight simulator since around 1985. It's come a ways!

Yes, ive been watching those for a while. hilarious! He also does in flight commentary..lol

OMG, I am dying here. Thanks for that OP.

I was an ATC for 30 years and can say a few moments of that video brought back memories.
Some from working in the tower and a few from bad ATC dreams.
Replace the male controller's voice with a female voice for added annoyance.
The pilots would chip away "another empty kitchen".

Funny to hear them argue about the wind sock and runway configuration, that really happens due to wind or weather minimums.

Short story...
I was instructing a newer tower controller on ground control.
We got a position brief from the controller we relieved.
A pilot soon after called for taxi.
My trainee did not reply? He could not hear any of the pilots on his head set.
I quickly realized my student had plugged his headset into the wrong head set jack.
He was one jack off. lol

So I stretched out my headset cord and walked to the back of the tower and unknown to him I started to taxi aircraft.
He was staring out the tower window with out a clue to who or why planes were moving.
Never again had a problem with him plugging into the wrong headset jack.;)

It's a kinder, gentler faa now, Ted. I stopped flying 14 years ago, and went to the other side of the mic. I started at ZLA, 0 to FPL in area C, in 11 months. Starting out, I took lots of clipboards to the back of the head.

We had t shirts with a jailbird chained to a scope..."ZLA...doing 25 to life.".

I had to get back to the Midwest, so I sold my soul and went management. FPL'd at a tower....spent 3 years there, then went to ZID as a manager. I'm an OM now, and miss talking to airplanes, everyday.

I've got 10 years, 10 months, and 23 days left...but who's counting?

Btw...the job gets real, really quick. One of my controllers had a fatal crash last week. I issued the ALNOT 16 minutes after when he should have landed (0230am). They found the charred remains in the woods about 6 hours later. It's frustrating reading the completely inaccurate information reported by the news with these events.

2 Years tower control and 22 years (with a 4 year break) in approach control. at CYVR. Many years doing procedure design, procedure writing, airspace defense planning etc. Oh, and training, even have students currently. All I can say is that I am glad these guys are having fun playing games... Hopefully they don't send in applications. :)

Cheers

Mike and Jeff my advice retire when eligible, it's been 13 years for me.
Seemed like 3 times a month the voice recorders were being transcribed for an investigation.
Our mantra was No good comes from any investigation.
Middle of my career had a month off with ptsd when the approach controller had a hairy deal in my airspace.
Just maintaining a class 2 physical till you were eligible for retirement can be stressful.
Combine all that with crazy shift work, swing/day/mid, 3 shifts with only 8 hours off between shifts.
Retired life after ATC has been good. :)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1599307286.jpg

Mike, I retired 5.5 years ago. Took my commuted value of my pension (works differently up here than in the US) and grew Turn3 into its 11,000 sq/ft current size. 15 months ago I got a call from one of our VPs asking if I would be interested in going back. So, I did. I can leave any day I want to. Re qualifying (took 3 weeks), and for the last 8 months I have been teaching a course. We have been on a 5/5 thanks to COVID since March 15th (lasting until November 17th) with plenty of stay at home "stand by" shifts where we need to be ready to report for our shift.

I have a great staff at the shop and I am there every day. Sometimes all day, sometimes in the AM, sometimes in the PM.

It is nice just talking to planes and teaching, not designing airspace, dealing with Airline execs, writing procedures etc like I used to do. Forgot how much I actually enjoy the challenges of approach/departure control without all of the politics. Plus knowing that any day I want can be my last makes it even better.... LOL

Cheers

Yeah, I work straight mids now as the OMIC...I truly miss working airplanes. In fact, I'm sitting at the watch desk right now. I'm still area certified, and I'm the only OMIC who still gets time. I usually open a sector up at about 2 in the morning and sit there and talk to FEDEX and UPS guys as they arrive/depart. I only average about 8 hours a month. I was in India on vacation in March when covid hit...we were 5 on and 10 off for the first 2 months. Now we're 5 on 5 off for at least the rest of the year. It'll be interesting how traffic drops on Oct 1st if the CARES money really stops propping airlines up.

We were averaging about 7000-7500 ops a day pre-covid, down from peak numbers of just under 9K a day. Now we're lucky to hit 4500 ops a day at ZID. In April, we were around 1500 ops a day...on a busy day. Crazy.

The plan is to retire as soon as I'm eligible. Not married, no kids. We have a three part retirement system with the FAA and I've been maxing it out since day one. I'll make more in retirement than what ill make sitting at a desk all night.

Ted...you were probably gone when the "250 girl" was working Feeder at SoCal. we'd be perfectly on our metering times or giving her perfect in-trail, and you could hear the panic in her voice as she would yell over the shout line that she "needed everybody at 250!!!!" fun times. haha.

Kennedy Steve moved to VR Boston :D

the Hotair balloon was nuts


look at the g0ddamned windsock !

"I don't hear the windsock controlling the airspace!":D

I actually witnessed a Goodyear blimp diving towards ground at a 30-40deg angle, starting from approximately 2-3,000 ft original height.
Engines at full rpm as I could hear.
It leveled off at a few hundred feet above treeline.

Unbelievable.

Mike (Embraer), not Mike (Ted), are you managing or supervising an enroute facility?

We are down to about 45-50% of movements at CYVR. GA in the TCA is as strong as ever. Local towers (4) within the TCA are as busy as if Covid never was a thing. But GA doesn't generate revenue...

We still get decent spikes in arrival/departure traffic, but not sustained like in the past. But every cycle it seems like a few more movements get added.

Yep..I am the night manager at Indy center. Our mid traffic hasnt been too affected, since we deal with two FedEx ops (mem and ind), ups (sdf), and now.... CVG, with amazon. The red-eye overflights are reduced, though. Our day shift and evening traffic is where we really took the hit.

Interesting, our midnight Oceanic and N/S coastal traffic is still there. Day/evening we picked up some extra cargo flights from Asia as well as a few flights that used to stop in LAX but can't now (Paris-Tahiti and and back) as well as a couple from NZ that stop at CYVR. Add a couple of new flights from Asia per day (one an A380, not sure what the load is like on that one as it is a strange time to add an A380 flight from Asia to CYVR... )

Another interesting thing is I have a student right now and we are not sure where to set qualification level with the lower traffic volumes...

I can tell you that daily FDX flights have risen @ 40% over the last 3-4 months. Not enough planes to carry all the freight demand right now...

Our trainees have been hanging out at home and getting paid since march. I believe within the next 10 days, they will start filtering them back in. R-side trainees first. We've had record eligible guys decide to call it quits since COVID hit, which already puts even more of a strain on staffing. Supposedly, they will be installing plexiglass barriers in the areas. The FAA's mantra has been to "train to whatever the traffic is" and then we'll slam them in the DYSIM lab. even still, there's no substitute for working real, busy traffic.

I watch a lot of the ATC videos on you tube, fascinating stuff, even for a layman. You can hear the stress in the controllers' voices. Im curious, how long does it take to learn all the format and procedures?

BTW, did you ever drive at Willow?

it took me 11 months of on the job training after 4 months of FAA academy training...which is REALLY fast for a center controller, but I was a pilot before doing this, which was a positive and a negative. We had a 50% washout rate in my area of specialty at LA Center. Most Center controllers take 3-4 years of OJT to certify. Positive of being a prior pilot: I already knew how to talk on radios. negative: I had to retrain myself to use 100% correct phraseology.

For me, the job itself has never been stressful. It's the oddball practice of working backwards rotating schedules. It's having to bid any vacation you want, a year in advance. It's constantly having to explain to relatives that you can't just take time off to go to an event or party. It's working 6 days a week.

There were a lot of days of training where I couldn't remember where I parked my car when I walked out of the building...and I'd literally wander around the parking lot for 10 minutes. I never really had crash dreams as most people would think, but I had dreams where airplanes kept coming and I couldn't keep up...which resulted in a crash. Being a radar controller only, you often forget the human element of it. It's easy to think of airplanes as a datablock of information on a scope...not an aluminum craft with hundred of lives on it. The job affects your life in other ways...my short term memory is fried. I trained my mind to input, process, and immediately dump information, because it comes at you fast and doesn't stop for 2 hours at a time. When I work on a car project or something, I spend more time looking for a tool I just had in my hand 30 seconds earlier, because that's just how my mind works.

Little things will cause you to snap....you go through a fast food drive through, and the person reads back your order incorrectly, and your first reaction is to immediately correct them.

I have a hard time listening to people tell me a story that has too much detail, or just continues on incessantly....I only need to hear the details. The other stuff annoys me.

Often times, when I come home from work, I don't want to talk. I've spent the last 8-9 hours talking non-stop. I've been around people's energy, both positive and negative. Controllers tend to be very Type A personalities....I'd rather decompress in the dark, in a quiet place....which is odd, considering I spend my workday, in a dark and quiet place.

These are the things have changed in me since I started the job.

I think here we have a controller from each phase of ATC.
In simple terms...
Mike above works the Center, where a controller might have 6+ sectors or scopes they need to check out on.
Basically they control everything flying above 20,000 feet.

Jeff I think works at an approach control?
So that could be everything flying between 3,000 feet to 20,000 feet.
Perhaps in some cases this can be the most challenging place to work in ATC.

I was at Lindbergh Control tower in San Diego.
We had a small control zone/airspace 5 mile radius up to 3,000 feet.
The best part of working in the tower is that we had big windows and the planes were not all green and 1/4 inch long like on a scope.
Our challenge was that we had only one runway.
So when you were landing the preceding departure was expected to be at least 6,000 feet and airborne.
If not go to plan B.
Tell the arrival to Go Around, then it's a piggy back on the departing aircraft and kind of a starburst as they merge and separate.

So check out time was quicker at our control tower facility.
A prior military controller might complete the training program in 6 months.
I new controller hired off the street might take over a year.
Training can be intense.
Meaningful training sessions are scheduled on position during known times of heavy traffic.
It's no fun after months of training and debriefing and working closely with your new trainee when you see your trainee is near the end of his allotted training hours and still can't get it.
You have to continue to write negative reports that will be used to document his removal.

My last trainee had no ATC experience and was from India.
First week training him on Clearance delivery was interesting.
At the end of a clearance the pilot might say "Good day".
This trainee would say "You also".
Except in his thick accent it sounded to me like "You Ahh sole". (you ahole?)
I had another controller listen to it and we both said fine, if the pilots don't mind neither do I. :D
He ended up getting checked out. :)

Yes today I very much enjoy Big Willow in a GT-1 car and Streets was fun in my 911.
https://youtu.be/R8v739aKYU4?t=60

I've had a few rides in medium size airships.
Sure was strange to be floating at 1,000 feet with the airship's nose pointed steeply down while not descending.
Staring out the front window for 5 minutes while seeing nothing but terrain.

Pilot let me try to fly it.
The controls look like you are sitting in a wheel chair.
I was over controlling it and could not stop it from oscillating up and down.
Another controller was on board and my failed flying attempt made him vomit.
That's karma I thought, lol.

Another time the airship pilot said he did airshows in his airship.
So I asked him to show me something he did in an airshow.
He got the airship up to 45mph? slight decent then cranked in a full right turn.
The airship started to turn right lost all momentum and made a mushy right turn.
I found the landing exciting as 6 guys on the ground ran through a large grassy field underneath the airship trying to grab the ropes to help tether the airship.

The airships at night had an interesting light that would make the entire airship/balloon glow at night.
That was the source of many UFO reports.

LOL, good one. Thanks for your input.

I think we may have met at Streets years ago.

Too cool...

Airships were a childhood obsession for me. Grew up near Goodyear/Carson. Always wanted to ride in one.

I trainied way back in early 93. Back then we had a far more defined program, I wish we still had it. I spent 6 months in our national school with 23 other class mates. We have been told that we digested about 4 years of material. We learned Tower, TCU and Area control (both radar and procedural). Then I spent 18 month in a smaller regional tower where it took 3 months to qualify. As part of the training stream back then, I was identified as a suitable approach controller. So after the 18 months in the regional tower, I got called to learn Approach control at CYVR. That course, which took place at the Area Control Center where the TCU was based) lasted about 6 months. Then we spent 11 months training on the floor with an OJI (on job instructor) until we got licensed. Our course went 4 for 4 licenses which was unheard of, but we had great instructors.

Since then I have taught many courses in the Approach Control (TCU) and designed a few of them, including our current course. Off the street, no experience, our current course starts with Generic, then gets specialized. We take the most promising students from Generic (right or wrong?) and put them on a TCU course. That course with classroom and simulation takes about 7 months with 4 students (our current max). Then On the Job Training with live traffic and a one on one instructor takes between 10 months and 14 months (pre COVID). If you had previous ATC experience this gets reduced signifantly. My current student was fast tracked has he had 10 years of approach control experience in Germany and Dubai. He is a good controller who understands all of the required control techniques and had confidence and experience. He just needed to learn the airspace, procedures, traffic mix, conflict points etc to be successful. He will spend about 60% of the total training time getting qualified, and I have always considered him a guaranteed qualification.

That said, we have had courses of 4 where any where between 0-3 got a license. Some is candidate selection and some is trainer skill/quality. As someone who has trained students for 22 years I have my own thoughts on hiring/selection/training, but in this politically correct world we live in my thoughts mostly fall on deaf Executive ears. I don't want the best cross section of society as hired candidates, I want those with the highest chance of success and aptitude hired as candidates.... But I degress... :)

I can't comment on how things are with the FAA despite spending countless hours/days/weeks/months/and even years working with my FAA brothers/sisters on projects and design. Everything from Super Bowl Defense to the Defense of our own hosting of the 2010 Olympics. But, I can say as far as Canada goes, if you have to work for someone, it is a great career. It allowed me to earn a very decent income and have enough time off to grow a successful business that I was passionate about. Plus, I have friends all over the US and the globe that I could call on in a moment's notice, if ever in need, for a favor or a couch to sleep on. The ATC community is very much like our P-Car community. We may disagree from time to time, but at the end of the day, we are all there for each other.

Cheers

I've found this a fascinating discussion to "listen in on" - thanks.