Week report

Hello everyone,

As you most probably noticed already, I haven't really written a lot this week, but to keep you up-to-date, I'll write a blog now.

Last time I wrote was Tuesday, where I said we would have a whole day of TRM on Wednesday. This TRM-session filled almost every minute between 8h15 and 16h. We discussed all sorts of things, pretty much all related to the safety network ATCo's have available. To give some examples, we have automatic systems detecting possible conflicts, we have 2 sets of eyes instead of 1 etc.

We also did some exercises, for example the classic one to see the effect of distortion in communication. 6 of the class, including me, were sent outside and had to wait until we were called in one by one. While waiting outside, a message was being discussed in the class which we would need to pass on to the next one.

The original message was something like this:
"An A320 takes off from Adelaide, headed for Brisbane, and is cleared to climb to flight level 370. He must, however, reach flight level 330 at latest 20 nautical miles before MIL due to a B747 crossing MIL at flight level 310 at approximately the same time. There is also a B767, going from Sydney to Adelaide, at flight level 310."

The final message was:
"An A320 is going from somewhere to Brussels, cleared to flight level 370 but not allowed to climb higher than flight level 330 because of a B747 at flight level 310. Then there is also a third aircraft going to ADLEY."

Point made, Erik. Good job there.

One small remark though, in case anyone having a say in this would read this... Overall, TRM was fun, but I think it would be better if it is split up into half days. By 14h30 or 15h, almost everyone was falling asleep due to lack of change. Having the same classroom and instructor the whole day can become a bit dull after a while.


Thursday was a normal day of school again. Started with RAT, AGA and MET. While RAT and MET are relatively new subjects to us, that was the last lesson of AGA we had before our first real exam, coming up next Thursday, so we pretty much reviewed everything there was to review. I'm actually a bit nervous as to how our exam will look like, especially since it's a almost-no-mercy one, in terms of retrying.

In the afternoon, we had AN2 and ACT but there isn't really much to tell about that. Just the ordinary things you'd expect from a course: new material to learn.


Friday was a shorter day on our schedule, finally. Starting with a progress test of NAV wasn't really the best way to start it though, especially when you figure out you've been learning the wrong chapter while reading the questions. I had to rely on what I picked up in class, and got myself a failing but still decent 60%.

After the test and some instructing about maps and charts, we had FPL and ACT. Apparently, FPL was the before last lesson as well, meaning we'll have our exam on the 19th already. Looks like we're really in for the "good" times now. But as a teacher of mine used to say in her Ghentish (Belgian city) accent "ge stot ervuur, ge muut erduur". Roughly translated it means as much as "Just get it over with already".

In the afternoon, we had a CBT of RAD, but most of us decided we could do this another time, so we headed home. Thinking about it now, I'm not really sure if we were allowed to do that, but we went back yesterday (going to school on a Saturday !!) to do it, so I hope we won't be in trouble.


Finally, we wanted to end the week with a nice touch and some of our group suggested to go to the Zurich Zoo. Unfortunately, it was too warm to see the (apparently famous?) penguin march, so the idea is discarded until further notice. Still in the mood to have a good time, we agreed to build a campfire in the woods just behind Wangen. There is a place specifically made for this purpose, so we didn't just pick a spot at random hoping we wouldn't light the entire forest. ;-)

All happily around the camp fire. Thanks for the pictures, Kristof.

We all arrived around 17h and left the (extinguished) campfire at about 23h. Having never camped before, I'm very proud to say we've kept the fire burning for the entire 6 hours and even had some trouble extinguishing it before leaving. There's the result of TRM and a great spirit among us: teamwork to get the fire lit and maintaining it, so thanks once again for the wonderful evening, guys and girls (Jen's mom also joined the party).

Then, as mentioned before, we went back to Skyguide on Saturday to do our homework. The rest was pretty much a lazy day, watching a movie, listening some music, surfing the web etc. Today won't be much more for me either, I guess.

Unfortunately, I can't really say when I'll be writing a next blog, with my first exam coming up this week and some more homework to do in between.

If you don't want to check everyday if I wrote a new blog, maybe you can add me on facebook. I'm the only one in the world with this name, so you shouldn't have a problem finding me. Just add a personal message to your request, saying you're a reader of my blog and I'll accept it.

Why add me on facebook? I always publish my blog on my facebook-page, so it might be an easier way to keep track of new blogs.

See you later.