Sector ownership logic

[Dawid Reszel]

Hello,

I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of sector ownership in vatSys.

If I understand correctly, each position can have multiple sectors connected to it and each sector consists of volumes limited by vertical limits defined in attributes and given boundaries. So far so good.

Do I get it correctly, that Responsible sectors are the sectors that can be linked with the defined sector i.e. CTRs of airfields below the TMA?

How do i tackle the issue of having multiple controllers sharing a sector depending on the configuration of TMA? Let's say that the TMA is divided into North, South and Director. When only South is present, he controls the whole TMA, but once North shows up, the northern parts of sectors need to be transferred to him. Then, when DIR shows up, he can take his sector, that depends on which runway is selected for arrivals. The North and South sectors are pretty much constant, while the DIR sector depends on the runway in use (generally speaking, 2 variants).

[Jake Saw]

Hi David

A sector is the smallest unit of airspace selectable by a controller in the Sector Configuration Window. Sectors are comprised of one or more Volumes of airspace. Selecting a defined position from the Positions menu will automatically select the sectors that correspond to that position (as defined in Positions.xml)

ResponsibleSectors is a way of grouping sectors in a user friendly fashion. For instance, you might have smaller sectors that are used for events combined together for every day use. In the sector config window, you can see these sector groups denoted with *, clicking on them expands the contents.

For TMA's, I'd encourage that you have one shared volume for the whole TMA - and assign that one volume to multiple sectors. That way there is no need to reconfigure airspace when changing runway. DefaultJurisdiction.xml allows you to specify rules for assigning departure jurisdiction based on the runway or route of each flight (eg. SIDs to the south will set the controlling sector to Departures South). You can still use responsible sectors to say that APP is responsible for DIR by default, but it's all referencing just one simple TMA volume. This works well in a TMA environment as you generally wish to have all TMA traffic announced to you. 

 

[Dawid Reszel]

Thank you,

So, given the example of N, S and DIR, the best approach IMO would be to define 4 sectors. One for N, one for S, and two for DIR.

It it possible for a sector to be automatically "taken away"? Say S is logged on with all 4 sectors turned on and N logs in. Can N automatically "take away" his sector from S or do S has to change his configuration of sectors manually?

Edited October 30, 2020 at 09:09 AM by David Reszel 984547
typo

[Jake Saw]

vatSys does detect the controller coming online and remove that sector from your controlled sectors automatically. However, the downside of using one common volume for the 4 sectors is the dynamic infill map will not change, so in this case you won't "see" it being taken. You can of course create maps though that correspond to the airspace setup (infills, lines, labels, etc.) that the user can toggle. This is what we do in real life.  

[Jake Saw]

Actually on looking closer at your images - it appears APP north and south don't change depending on runway?

If that is case I would have 3 Volumes, North South and Director - with the director volume encompassing both runway directions. The volumes will then map nicely to each sector and the dynamic infill will update as you need.