New Toys

[Scott Voigt]

Hi Y'all;

I was able to get my simulator training in today for some new functions that we are going to get on our MDM's (Main Display Monitors). The nicest one probably is getting NEXRAD (Doppler WX Radar) overlayed on our screens. Shows three levels of weather rather nicely and doesn't interfere with anything else on the scope with the color scheme that they came up with.

Another feature is one that they call annotate. <shrug> I don't see that I am going to use it a lot, but it does have it's uses. We will be able to draw on our screen so that we can define one of a kind special use airspace or temporary things going on as well as adding text to the screen to remind us of things going on, or with temp. freqs for sectors... All in all, nice little feature. Training didn't take very long as it was all pretty intuitive.

Hopefully the next add on will add a fourth line to the data block for a scratch pad to add things for automated coordination. Lots of nice little things coming on line...

Take care

[West Coast]

Will you still be able to define cells by VIP levels or some other way of defining it? How accurate do you think it will be for close in manuevering around cells?

[1261]

Great stuff, Scott. Let us know when it's due for replacement so we know when we can expect to see it over here!

[Scott Voigt]

Hi Westcoast;

We are going to showing three levels and are working on doing that across the board. We are not showing the weakest of the weather with just rain. We will be showing level three on up. The upper two levels are the REAL bad levels...

As to vectoring around cells. We don't do that here due to legal liabilities. We do try to paint a picture for the pilot as to what we see though and try to give them options. The one issue with the doppler weather radar is that it takes anywhere from six minutes to 10 minutes to update. So you don't know just what can happen in 10 minutes...

regards

[Iron City]

Scott: As you know the NEXRAD weather products provide a six level weather product for I believe raw reflectivity. They also do a precip density and a few others (the whole thing is on NWS's NEXRAD site) It is certainly better than the slashes and stuff on the old display.

How close you want to come to the depicted weather depends on how recent the weather product is that is being used to generate the display and how fine a resolution the data and display are. The data resolution on NEXRAD is not bad, used to know the numbers, but believe it is 1nm grid, says so on the displays direct from NWS. Got to watch how old the data is though. Believe FAA gets a port out of the NEXRAD to feed the weather processors, so old data is under FAA control to some extent.

Is "annotate" like the toy on television and can you make like John Madden and diagram the plays?

[karrank]

We currently get radar data on a separate monitor - useless, but will soon get it on screen as you describe Scott, with the same 10 minute update. Haven't seen it yet though.

Annotate (we call it text-on-screen or TXA for some strange reason. I think a lot of our acronyms have been badly translated from the french...) has been vital to cover the fundamentally stupid design of our system, a lot of worst of which (thankfully and finally) has been re-designed out of it. Used a lot now to record details of airspace releases, vertical limits of temporary airspace and levels of inbound coordinated traffic (no data blocks here untill they hit your screen.....)

System was originally delivered without it, we got it activated before we went live on the system. It wasn't safe without it.

[BEXIL160]

Ahh what dreams are made of.....

Wx info is still not available "on the tube" at any of the UK ACCs, despite many, many requests for it.

I do remember however that on the original Plessey Watchman consoles you had the ability to draw lines and insert text anywhere you liked...... Used it a few times for temporary restricted airspace and such like.

Rgds BEX

[Bern Oulli]

BEX

I also remember the Watchman console. On one idle and horribly foggy afternoon I used the drawing and text facility to copy the built in test grid onto the screen. I then complained to Tels that I couldn't switch off the test grid! Took them about an hour to tumble it. I also remember the facility to show the filtered out wx returns as a "ghost" image. You could see the targets clearly, you could see the wx clearly and it didn't take ten minutes to update.

[BEXIL160]

Quite right! I'd forgotten about the "ghost" facility, VERY useful it was too.

A pity then that years later I sit in front of a completely processed screen with absolutely NO weather info available on it at all... PROGRESS. I think not.

Thanks for the memories
BEX