POETS day

Good day everyone,

Today I found out that EUROCONTROL has discovered my blog and published it on their official Twitter- and Facebook-page. Therefore I would like to start this blog by thanking EUROCONTROL for the recognition and with welcoming my new readers/followers.

This blog's initial intention was to inform my family and friends about my progress here, if I wasn't able to keep or get in touch with all of them, so even though it's a great honour having my blog published like this, I have to admit the feeling of realizing that people all across Europe will now be able to follow me is a bit scaring. The fact that persons I don't even know will read if I pass or fail the course, increases the pressure quite a bit actually, but that, of course, does not mean I don't welcome you. I sincerely hope you'll enjoy reading my story and make it through to the end, together with me.

My "regulars" might have noticed I haven't uploaded a new blog yesterday, so today will be a compilation of yesterday and today, starting of course with Thursday. As a reminder, we had RTB, AN2, ADY and RAD that day.

As I do realize, some of the new readers are likely to start reading this blog from this point on, I'll probably make this one a bit more technical and thus longer than I have done in the past few days (old habits die hard, regulars)

In RTB, we discussed the reasons of why a radar was needed in the past, how it evolved through time and how it will evolve in the future. We also discussed how ATCo's can use the situation display to identify and keep track of so-called "targets" or "blips".
AN2 was again about the airspace structure in Switzerland, more precisely its VMC minima, and a first introduction on how to read navigational charts.
ADY was nothing out of the ordinary of what you'd expect from an Aerodynamics-lesson. Wing shapes and their effect on relative wind, critical angles of attack at which it will disrupt the oncoming airflow etc.
RAD had about the same setup as ADY, only about radar-related information.

All in all, material-wise it was a bit of a "boring" day. Mainly theory, without a lot of interaction so here and there some heads were dropping. Willem and I ended the day with a comical note though, watching Toby doing his ritual of making trucks honk at him while he's standing on the bridge and later watching Gabriel Iglesias's stand up comedy show called "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy".


Today, being POETS day, was a bit different. Most of us were not really looking forward to RAT, a class we had for the first time and which is the same as RAD but for radio technology. With RAD being a very technical course, we had expected the same for RAT, but actually today was the first time ever I understood the principle of how radio wavelengths are measured actually. Martin, our instructor for RAT, was about 30 minutes late due to a mishap in the scheduling system, but nevertheless I'd like to thank him for finally making it crystal clear to me.

In ACT, we reviewed our homework about engine design and got some in-depth views on how throttle and mixture control are operated in a piston engine.

As we had ended all course material for FPL in the previous lesson, today we had to fill out a VFR-IFR flightplan between Sion and Zürich, while the other half of the class were allowed to have a look in the AIM-section at Skyguide Dübendorf. After about 15 minutes, positions switched and we were allowed. About 10,000 flight plans per year pass those small desks we went to visit and about 200 AIP's, all kept up-to-date of course, are available in print-out and on computer for flight briefing. Quite a big business for such a small office and once again a proof that looks can be deceiving.

In the afternoon, we had NAV, in which we had a progress test. About half of our class weren't properly informed about this, so the results were slightly below the required 80%. I got 79,16% with my 9.5/12, still being among the top of the class though, so we're lucky that these progress tests aren't taken into account for our final score.

In the final class of today's course, we had AGA with our class teacher Bruce. He's the one who introduced us to the term "POETS day". It's an aussy abbreviation for "Piss Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday" so that's what we all did. Our class was scheduled to end at 16h45, but instead we finished at 16h05. Guess the instructors don't really like staying late either, so they rush us through the course if necessary. But even though we actually rushed through today's lesson, I don't have the feeling we missed out on anything. Everything was still very clear and understandable. If only all teachers could make a lesson go as fast as Bruce can. I'm sure we would have 5 days off and 2 days of school, instead of the other way around.

That's about it for today's school talk. That aside, we also had Michael's birthday (he blew out 24 candles today) to celebrate, which most of our group are doing at this very moment. Everyone but Damien (whose girlfriend is coming over for the weekend) and me (who doesn't like and isn't used to going out until 4 a.m.) went out to Zürich to party.

This concludes about the entire last 2 days in Wangen. I don't think I'll be writing any blogs this weekend, by the way. Not that I have a lot of plans made (only one is a virtual ATC-event on Sunday evening), but as this blog is still supposed to be about my ATCo course, I don't think it's of much use if I write you what I'm doing in the weekend. Feel free to let me know in the comments, though, if you want me to write what we are doing in our spare time as well.

Thanks for reading. See you on Monday.