New taxi phraseology.

[J Jason Vodnansky 810003]

Harold,

 

How can this already be adopted into training programs if it isn't official on VATSIM, within VATUSA yet? Simple, a facility chooses to do so. However, it isn't mandated, nor should it be expected that any other facility do the same thing. Now, IF it becomes mandated within the division, it is a whole new story...

 

Back in the SATCO days, when Harv was making announcements about how many Pepsi's had been drunk, and the network was excited and near collapse when 200 or 300 users were online at the same time, phrases like that WERE used. The atmosphere was MUCH friendlier, and FAR LESS INTIMIDATING to a new user. There was a benefit to having to have to work to get online. It meant people had to WANT to be on, thus the membership had to work to get online. That work became a filter of sorts, and filtered out a lot of the, shall we say "rif-raf".

 

Nowadays, anybody can get on with a few clicks, and membership is open to anyone with an e-mail address. Yes, makes it VERY easy to get online, and vastly increased the membership pool. It however has cost us many members who don't enjoy dealing with the "kids" who want everything "spoon-fed" to them and don't want to do any work themselves. More to the point, these "kids" don't know, nor WANT to know what rules they must follow. It has also cost us members who simply enjoyed the "togetherness" that this shared experience presented.

 

Any other remaining SATCO members care to answer this? How many rules did we have in SATCO? I simply can't remember if we had ANY! I think we just got on, had fun, and controlled. Lots of mutual respect, and we always found a way to get along.

 

Gone are those days apparently, only to be replaced by people who want to mirror the FAA, and want to use VATSIM as a training tool for ATC schools, and what not.

 

I am not saying that a member cannot use this as atool to jump start a career. Heck, pilots enhance their IFR skills on FlightSim all the time, but pilots do it because they WANT to do it, NOT because they HAVE to do it to advance on the network. Controllers on the other hand now have to train, train, train, and many can't get training on the network, because too many of the "kids" mentioned before demand an unrealistic level of competency for clearance delivery and ground and so on, then many of them simply get bored, and move on to other hobbies. Never becoming instructors themselves!

 

In closing, on the controller side, it seems to me, that the "kids" keep coming, taxing the the instruction staff to their own breaking point with wants, desires and straight up demands. Staff members get told they need to train more and more, donating more and more time to training, losing time to THEIR enjoyment of the hobby because of these same demands. Enough is enough, this isn't the FAA, and to the best of my knowledge gained over these last 14 years of SATCO/VATSIM, it was never supposed to be the FAA.

 

I don't know, but enough is enough, something needs to change...

 

JV

[Thomas King 1020280]

In closing, on the controller side, it seems to me, that the "kids" keep coming, taxing the the instruction staff to their own breaking point with wants, desires and straight up demands. Staff members get told they need to train more and more, donating more and more time to training, losing time to THEIR enjoyment of the hobby because of these same demands.

 

Thats probably the best way to put it. I couldn't agree more. Everyone in my Training Staff will tell you that I train non stop, and at some points, have no time to control or fly. Im not doggin the new people, but it seems throughout my Training Administrator role, a lot of people just refuse to read the required material. This leads me to having to reteach what the student and I went over in the previous lesson as review.

 

Oh and yes, I have been demanded to do many tasks by students.

 

I think some of the changes that have been made, specifically for pilots with the Pilot Training Program that was just announced is great. I joined VATUSA right after, or right as they were closing the Academy. Would it be an option to reopen the Academy in order to train every new student in a uniform fashion? You guys would have better insight as I never went through it.

 

TK

[Julian Hoffman 850174]

Another thing that's important to remember is although the FAA has mandated it, that doesn't mean everybody's doing it. Spend time listening to various ground frequencies on liveatc.net, some do, some don't. I guarantee the ones that don't aren't getting fired.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

Ducks are probably even better!

 

dont know about that one "Ducks in a row" = shooting gallery. probably not the image theyd want to send out

[Harold Rutila 974112]

I think some of the changes that have been made, specifically for pilots with the Pilot Training Program that was just announced is great. I joined VATUSA right after, or right as they were closing the Academy. Would it be an option to reopen the Academy in order to train every new student in a uniform fashion? You guys would have better insight as I never went through it.

The idea is tossed around just about every year, and the general response is that it will not happen. It's not necessarily a general consensus, because if you went around and polled all VATUSA TAs, I think most would probably say yes to re-opening the academy. But at this point it is very clear that it will not be reopened anytime soon.

 

How can this already be adopted into training programs if it isn't official on VATSIM, within VATUSA yet? Simple, a facility chooses to do so. However, it isn't mandated, nor should it be expected that any other facility do the same thing. Now, IF it becomes mandated within the division, it is a whole new story...

Okay, yes, I understand your point now. This is in response to my saying that I would hope all ARTCCs are teaching this. That is just my opinion as an I1, and I hope you understand that. I completely understand where you're coming from, too.

 

Staff members get told they need to train more and more, donating more and more time to training, losing time to THEIR enjoyment of the hobby because of these same demands.

Oh yea, tell me about it. I've done training with students almost every day since late June. I haven't flown since October. I talked to another instructor this evening and he told me he's ready to just step away for a month; we've both been accommodating a very high level of training requests. I would do the same, but the people I'm training are the types of people this network needs. Hard working, I-don't-know-but-let-me-look-it-up type students who I know will make much needed improvements to both our staffing levels and our community as an ARTCC. Of course, there are the people who quit after their S1 rating for no apparent reason, but I'm numb to that phenomenon by now.

 

On top of these hours I'm putting in, I recently had a student book instruction time with me last week, despite knowing full well that I had scheduled training with another student for that same day and time. I have no clue what that was all about, but then to top it off he threw a shit fit with me via e-mail about why I canceled his session over the other students.

[Daniel Hawton]

The division has not yet officially adapted it for use on TRACON and en-route positions where tower services are provided when the respective TWR is offline. As far as I'm concerned, it's been adapted into training programs for S1s and S2s.

 

I remember Mike Hodge during his time as VATUSA3 telling the training staff to teach from the TRC because many pilots/controllers/etc. were complaining that phraseology was not uniform throughout VATUSA. The TRC was written to help fix this and give a more centralized location for study (I could be wrong.. but I remember training before the TRC.. whew boy). Thus, as far as I am concerned, the final authority of ATC phraseology and handling is the TRC. If the TRC does not discuss it or is vague about it, then the FAAO 7110.65 comes out.. however.. if the TRC says do X Y Z and the .65 says Z Y X, the TRC is the manual for VATUSA controlling so X Y Z it is. I'm not a huge stickler on phraseology, if you're in the right ballpark and your instructions are clear they're good enough.. on the other hand if you're giving "Enter a left down wind for runway blah" and snapping at the pilot for responding "Unable, IFR flight" with "Do you have the field in sight? If so, enter a left downwind!" as a TA then that's not close enough.

 

Because of this new procedure, I have found myself treating more airfields as uncontrolled when at the approach/center levels just so I do not have to worry about it at all.

 

And yes, even real world not everyone is using the new phraseology. HOWEVER, the controllers that are not are leaving themselves open to liabilities every time they do not use it. If something happens, the fact they didn't use the required phraseology and procedures may very well be identified as the cause of the incident or one of the major factors and could lead to consequences for that controller. No, you'll never be fired for bad phraseology, you'll just have to either keep training, face a talking to from the CIC/branch supervisor (if they're monitoring), and/or face consequences if something happens.

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

I remember Mike Hodge during his time as VATUSA3 telling the training staff to teach from the TRC because many pilots/controllers/etc. were complaining that phraseology was not uniform throughout VATUSA. The TRC was written to help fix this and give a more centralized location for study (I could be wrong.. but I remember training before the TRC.. whew boy). Thus, as far as I am concerned, the final authority of ATC phraseology and handling is the TRC. If the TRC does not discuss it or is vague about it, then the FAAO 7110.65 comes out.. however.. if the TRC says do X Y Z and the .65 says Z Y X, the TRC is the manual for VATUSA controlling so X Y Z it is. I'm not a huge stickler on phraseology, if you're in the right ballpark and your instructions are clear they're good enough.. on the other hand if you're giving "Enter a left down wind for runway blah" and snapping at the pilot for responding "Unable, IFR flight" with "Do you have the field in sight? If so, enter a left downwind!" as a TA then that's not close enough.

 

Because of this new procedure, I have found myself treating more airfields as uncontrolled when at the approach/center levels just so I do not have to worry about it at all.

 

And yes, even real world not everyone is using the new phraseology. HOWEVER, the controllers that are not are leaving themselves open to liabilities every time they do not use it. If something happens, the fact they didn't use the required phraseology and procedures may very well be identified as the cause of the incident or one of the major factors and could lead to consequences for that controller. No, you'll never be fired for bad phraseology, you'll just have to either keep training, face a talking to from the CIC/branch supervisor (if they're monitoring), and/or face consequences if something happens.

 

I never forced the training, but promoted as much as I could. Listen, if something is wrong in the TRC there are around 60 different people in the division who can fix it. Every TA, ATM, DATM, VATUSA Staff had (granted, this was when I was USA3, almost a year ago) access to edit any of the pages on the TRC. They have to be approved by the upper USA staff (1,2,3) before they will be public, but that was a safety measure.

 

The whole point behind the wiki, was so that it did not get outdated like the previous USA Training material. I sincerely hope that that is not the case.

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

I think some of the changes that have been made, specifically for pilots with the Pilot Training Program that was just announced is great. I joined VATUSA right after, or right as they were closing the Academy. Would it be an option to reopen the Academy in order to train every new student in a uniform fashion? You guys would have better insight as I never went through it.

The idea is tossed around just about every year, and the general response is that it will not happen. It's not necessarily a general consensus, because if you went around and polled all VATUSA TAs, I think most would probably say yes to re-opening the academy. But at this point it is very clear that it will not be reopened anytime soon.

 

At the last Training Department meeting i had (granted, almost a year ago), this was discussed, and of the people in attendance (I wanna say 40+ but there were at least 30 people there), they collectively agreed that the academy, despite the best intentions, wasn't worth pursuing. The audio files should still be there though for you to listen too if you'd like to hear the discussion for yourself.

[Harold Rutila 974112]

Mike,

 

Yes, you're correct. I stand corrected. There was a meeting where a vote was taken place and the consensus was no. What I should have said is that I'm not sure the consensus would still be "no" to opening the academy again today, because really I think the problems we face without one have escalated since then, based a lot on instructor burnout as Jason referred to above and others continue to mention in a few other forums, and the almost constant monthly increase on students coupled with the 90% who won't go beyond basic training.

 

The TRC was more or less a response to the growing outcry for centralized training. I think an evaluation needs to be done on the effectiveness of the TRC. I have been telling my students to use it before every session, and it has helped a lot of people out (particularly the pre-S3s I'm training), but I don't know how well it's worked at the S1/S2 level. IMO it's just like any other major undertaking in that it needs constant evaluation and feedback.

[J Jason Vodnansky 810003]

One big problem with the academy is that you must STAFF the academy.

 

To do that, you will have to take the already limited number of instructors, ask them to donate either more time so that they keep up with their duties at the vARTCC level, or they (the instructors) reduce their hours at the vARTCC level while contributing to the academy.

 

It seems that no matter how you slice it, the problem is "man-hours". There are not enough instructors for the load.

 

There are many solutions, and there are pros and cons to each. I don't know what the right answer is, but clearly, a decision needs to be made because the status quo ain't working...

 

JV

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

I think that it's not so much the academy that would help, but if you took the ideas and goals from the academy and implemented in the individual ARTCCs, I think that would help with the situation.

 

I don't know much the division was helped by the TRC because I don't have access to the statistics. I do know that after talking to TAs who have inclusively used the TRC (or some other varient of web-based training, which was the MAIN goal of the TRC to begin with, and should not be forgotten), they have mentioned that used a web-based training system has DRASTICALLY improved student knowledge and efficiency.

 

The trick is not only too use it, but too use it correctly and effectively.

[Daniel Hawton]

When I was a TA/INS/MTR, my problem with the TRC was actually getting students to read it/want to read it. Most of them appeared to want to be spoon fed everything which we did not have the staffing for. I always told them if you want to do any kind of ATC, you're going to have to learn to read and like it because everything ATC related is reading... from scopes, to charts, to publications, flight strips, etc. The only part of ATC that isn't reading is Local and Ground where you get to look out a window real world but you still get to read their flight strip.

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

When I was a TA/INS/MTR, my problem with the TRC was actually getting students to read it/want to read it. Most of them appeared to want to be spoon fed everything which we did not have the staffing for. I always told them if you want to do any kind of ATC, you're going to have to learn to read and like it because everything ATC related is reading... from scopes, to charts, to publications, flight strips, etc. The only part of ATC that isn't reading is Local and Ground where you get to look out a window real world but you still get to read their flight strip.

 

That seems to be the way of some students these days, the question is, did you spoon feed them the information? I hope not

 

If the student isn't willing to learn, the instructor should not be willing to teach. Spoon feeding to students not only is a major waste of ARTCC resources, it's also creating bad habits and reinforcing negative behavior, which will only continue to get worse as time goes on.

 

Maybe students don't want to read the TRC because it's poorly written? Maybe there isn't enough video/pictures/audio to keep their interest? Maybe their just lazy. We can't do anything about the last part, but we have a responsibility and the opportunity to do something about the first two.

[Harold Rutila 974112]

I once had a student tell me he didn't like to read anything. You can imagine how well his training went.

[Daniel Hawton]

When I was a TA/INS/MTR, my problem with the TRC was actually getting students to read it/want to read it. Most of them appeared to want to be spoon fed everything which we did not have the staffing for. I always told them if you want to do any kind of ATC, you're going to have to learn to read and like it because everything ATC related is reading... from scopes, to charts, to publications, flight strips, etc. The only part of ATC that isn't reading is Local and Ground where you get to look out a window real world but you still get to read their flight strip.

 

That seems to be the way of some students these days, the question is, did you spoon feed them the information? I hope not

 

If the student isn't willing to learn, the instructor should not be willing to teach. Spoon feeding to students not only is a major waste of ARTCC resources, it's also creating bad habits and reinforcing negative behavior, which will only continue to get worse as time goes on.

 

Maybe students don't want to read the TRC because it's poorly written? Maybe there isn't enough video/pictures/audio to keep their interest? Maybe their just lazy. We can't do anything about the last part, but we have a responsibility and the opportunity to do something about the first two.

 

Negative, I did not. I stopped the training session and told them to go read and explained why we told them to read in the first place. Next thing I knew, that student never asked me for training again. No biggie. haha

[Christopher Mauro]

I once had a student tell me he didn't like to read anything. You can imagine how well his training went.

 

VATSIM and VATUSA = reading. Plain and simple.

[Daniel Hawton]

I once had a student tell me he didn't like to read anything. You can imagine how well his training went.

 

VATSIM and VATUSA = reading. Plain and simple.

 

Even more simply...

 

ATC = Reading..

 

or we can just leave it as:

 

LIFE = Reading.

[Michael Hodge Jr 961044]

You know, a part of me says to just ignore topics like this and just walk away from it. I mean after all, I did quit almost a year ago, but this is always going to be something so dear to my heart, I can't help but interject...so just in case someone may be wondering WHY i keep posting about training related issues in the US division..that's why.