A few more days...

... and then we're off. After about 2 months, we're going home again to celebrate the holidays. I guess this might actually be my last blog before leaving here, as I still have some things to do in a rather short time limit.

But unlike my intro suggests, I'm not that busy thinking about going home (yet). I intentionally try not to, in order to keep focus of what's happening in class. Sometimes it's easier than a moment later, but overall I can't complain.


In my Thursday-blog last week (20150525 note: now deleted, due to lost picture), I put a picture online and I got some questions as to what it means exactly, so here's a quick run-through for people not familiar with ATC:
SVA56 = symbol for aircraft using "Saudia 56" as callsign
MAU712 = same as SVA56, but then for "Air Mauritius 712"
334 and 336 (below the callsign) = their altitudes in hundreds of feet (here 33,400 and 33,600 feet)
AOSTA = a navigational waypoint, to which both aircraft are flying and are estimated to fly over at approximately the same time.
054/9.5 [1] = Direction to fly/distance in nautical miles [designator of which distance and measuring tool used]

Then what does separation have to do with this? In aviation, there are certain minima to apply. Either at least 1000 feet (300 meter) vertically or 5 nautical miles (8 kilometer) horizontally. In this case, the separation is still present horizontally (>5NM) but there's only a 200ft difference between these two aircraft (obviously <1000ft). They are flying towards each other, so soon the 9.5NM they have now will become less than 5NM => loss of separation. This is then seen as an unsafe situation and that's generally not what you want with aircraft buzzing through the sky at 500 knots (approximately 900 km/h), carrying at least a few dozen people on board.


That being said, there were a few things in the past days that were very pleasant. I passed both my AN1 and ADY exam and we have now started a new sort of simulator training, called LSAT (designator of the fictitious airspace we train in) instead of BRG (Basic Radio Groups). In this new sim-training, we're learning more and more how to work without the instructor's guidance during the exercise. Of course, he's still sitting behind us and might whisper things in our ear from time to time, but the general idea is that by the end of the coming 7 lessons, we should be able to work this simulator alone. To get to that point, we now receive written feedback as to what went good or bad during the exercise, instead of a quick verbal word about the performance.
To do the LSAT, we had Gregor (hope I wrote it correctly?) joining us yesterday (maybe today as well) who's an instructor at the IANS in Luxembourg, where we'll be going to after Zurich. He also gave us our EUROCONTROL-badges, of which I might add a picture here later on, as I did with the Skyguide-badge.

Today, it's my turn to start as a controller in the sim and I'm actually quite nervous just thinking about that, though I can't come up with a reason why. All previous runs I had in the sim went super, so I shouldn't really worry, yet I do somehow. Tomorrow and the day after, we have our last 2 exams before the holidays (yes, still two to go, which is also one of the reasons why I try not to think about home too often yet) being BRT 2 and AN2.

Talk to you later, everyone. :)