if we're on and IFR flight and outside of radar coverage, how do you guys keep an eye on us and what sort of information do you look at?
In TAAATS (The Aust. Advanced Air Traffic System) which is a Eurocat 2000 made by Thomson-CSF, we have workstations with 4 screens. A large ASD (Air situation dispay) in the centre, to the right a smaller secondary ASD, on the left a touch screen for intercom and frequency management, and also a AAARDS (cant remember what all the As stand for) that includes RAPIC (the Met Radar info from the Met office) as well as other info for the controller.
If you're out of radar coverage, as an IFR flight we have a square symbol with your label indicating this. Your position info in the first instance is computed by the ATC System using GRIB winds and flt pln info. The system is updated by the controller whenever you give ATC a position report.
can you see the CB activity on your scopes and be able to vector us non-wx radar equipped aircraft around the bad stuff,
Scopes, there's a word not often used these days. The RAPIC provides snapshots of the wx at tem minute intervals and is provided on a separate screen to the main and secondary ASDs. Hence we are unable to vector aircraft around wx. We can provide advice on the wx picture we recieve, but that's all.
for more info see this website.
http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/...banecentre.asp