Another week flew by

Hey,

It's all in the title. Last week literally flew by. I didn't even notice it's been a week. Seemed more like only a couple of days to me. But as you all know, Switzerland isn't in a time capsule, so we must have done something to fill that time.

As mentioned before, I still had 2 exams to learn for while writing last week. Both went well, so I passed with more than enough margin to be on the safe side of the 80%. But that's only minor news of the past days. The big news is of course our new "operational" environment: the simulator.

The Piloting Course took a while, but was very instructive as we have to assume the role of pilot in command of multiple aircraft while others are working at the controller-position. "The better we do, the less trouble they have." is the main slogan actually.
Thursday was the first time we got to do the actual controlling bit. Started of slowly by just identifying aircraft upon entering the airspace, but gradually building up the pace and difficulty. Right now, in lesson 4, we started climbing and descending aircraft.
At first, we were all a bit of anxious, as you can imagine, which was quite noticeable in the air around the simulators we were working at. First of all, it's a completely new environment we find ourselves in all of a sudden. Second, nobody knew the layout of the airspace yet. We were supposed to be given charts etc. as soon as we started, but apparently someone forgot about that, so it was all pretty much last-minute learning. That's one of the reasons why I haven't written yet this week.

At first, it created some hick-ups but now, one week later, we start to get the hang of it and you can feel the air starting to grow a bit less dense, with some more time for chatting and laughter. The fact that we sometimes get complaints about disturbing other persons working in the simulator, might in fact be an indicator we're having too much fun already...

Yesterday, we also had TRM again. Subject of the morning: decision making. Erik was right ... If I had known we would be standing in the corridor for over an hour, I would have chosen to be late instead of on time. But little joke aside, we learned a lot about what types of decision you make, how you make them, what influences them and how they effect your duty as a controller.

That's actually the main news from last week's life here, course-related. In the weekend, 4 of us went ice skating again (we'll probably go for it every week now). Only, this time, we didn't go to Dübendorf but Zürich, to the largest ice skating rink in Europe. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a disappointment on arrival as we noticed that only 1/3 of the rink was available to regular skaters, meaning it wasn't really bigger than any other ice rink, but we had our fun nonetheless.

Today, we have the morning off - we don't have to follow TTX or LAW anymore, as it isn't of importance for MASUAC-students anymore - so we start at 1200Z (13h local) with 2 hours of simulator, then 2 hours of AN2 (last lesson before the exam, I think) and end the day with a video-conference with Maastricht.
Next exams coming up: AN1 (Friday) and ADY (Monday).

See you, everyone.