Originally Posted by SimGod
Fear not! I am not a newbie at this game..
Who said anything about fear?
Frustration, we can talk about that, maybe.
I have been through this process more times than I care to remember and its always painful,
Been through a few myself, and it's absolutely
not always that painful. Some of the tech changes I've seen go through have been, by and large, a pleasure to work with, after the bugs were ironed out. Unfortunately that has not been the case with many of the recent ones.
We work in a profession where change is frequent and ongoing. Learning and study is required throughout the career. To view it as painful is, I believe, unhealthy. Sometimes it can be fairly challenging, however.
...and usually the older ATCO's are resistant to change (human nature).
It is human nature, but you seem to not know controllers that well. We (older controllers) have learned over quite a long time what constitutes change for changes sake, and change that is actually beneficial and required, seen the many blurring of lines between those, and sometimes become a little cynical of the reported reasons for said change. You might be surprised to find some of the older controllers are actually surprisingly adaptable.
My belief is we must look at these new systems and see what they can bring to the table and look at if the older way of doing things should be challenged, or even phased out...
By your emoticon choice, your mind is already made up, then.
I'll tell you something, I challenge the way I do things, and the tools I use to do them, old or new, every bleeding day. My livelihood depends on it. And maybe a bit more besides that.
I firmly believe writing on Estrips is worthless, mainly due to the limitations of the technology (HMI).
And you base that on.....?
Even with the poor definition of the writing tool, I would not want to be without it.
Case in point: Today we had an emergency. A/c came back with a fire warning. Without the writing tool, it would have been possible to create the information required to be displayed, if' we'd had a couple of spare minutes to do so, and had nothing else to do in the interim. We had neither of those luxuries. Without the information displayed in some form, quite an element of risk is introduced. Especially when immediate decisions need to be taken, amidst multiple distractions.
However there are so many benefits to EFPS for an airport and a regional/national ATM as a whole that it cannot be ignored as the future.
Maybe there are. What are they, then? And at what cost? No, don't bother answering that.
Also, go ask the average 21 year old ab initio to write on paper strips vs using EFPS and I am pretty sure you know what response you will get.
And the value of the opinion of an ab-initio, who has no mastery of the job, in regard to a new shiny toy is that s/he might bring a new and previously unconsidered view to the topic? Or did you have another point to make with that statement?
I know it hurts
.
I find your response insulting, because it is assumptive, patronizing, and shows you to be closed to input. Or maybe selectively closed. Why did you even ask the question, if you already think you know the answer?
Originally Posted by pdcta
Why you need to write strips?! What you have to write down on it? Can't you move to a stripless system?!
We have EFS but no one cares them. All the things you can do on the EFS can be done also on the radar screen on the lable or in the inbound list.
The question was in regard to a control tower environment. Many of the a/c and other traffic dealt with by tower controllers do not appear in any radar list.