Originally Posted by Danny42C
I can relate to your opening remarks about Shawbury in the '60s. In my years there, I came to three distinct conclusions about what the place was for . First, I adopted the Received Wisdom that it turned out Air Traffic Controllers. After a while it became clear that that was complete nonsense. What it did was to turn out the skeletons of ATCs, who later would be clothed by the flesh of experience. At the end, the truth dawned: it was no more than a giant Aptitude Test. If you could hack it there, you could learn to be an ATC on your Station (and vice versa !)
You speak the Truth, Brother. I doubt there is any training establishment that produces a fully-formed operator, whether with a control column, spanner, pen or an MPN-11
You guys at CATCS and similar establishments, as you said, built the skeleton ... the Units put the flesh on the bones, and experience adds the muscle.
But ... no selection process is perfect. 'Aptitude Test' is a fair comment ... how do you test aptitude for 4-dimensional chess? I have always held the view that ATCOs are born, not made. You either have that sort of weird mental wiring, or you don't - just like aircrew, actually. Its an Art Form - you have it, or you don't, and no amount of teaching will generate it.
And there's one dimension I'll chuck into the room as well ... an upper age limit for ATC trainees, which was 35 when I left. After that age, apart from slower learning, one significant factor was "fear of getting it wrong". The young ones don't think about it at all. The older ones are more conscious of screwing it up, and killing someone remotely from their air-conditioned cavern.
I handled a few like that on Units - a very interesting SATCO/LEO challenge. I had one flt lt who switched from Admin (Sec) to ATC in her 30s. First job was obviously make her O i/c coffee swindle, which highlighted that we had been doing things wrong! And then she got into her OJT programme. Nervous, perfectly capable from my and the Training Team's POV ... but it was hard to convince her she was actually rather good. She made her way through the control positions, on my signature in her F5994. And then ... decision time.
I had a bunch of inherited old (50+) flt lts who were endorsed as Supervisors. Half of them were just seeing out their time to pension, and CBA. So ... "Ahem, *** as of next Monday, you're training for Supervisor"
She screeched!!
"Sorry, in case you haven't noticed, I run this sqn. You start Sup training on Monday" There then followed a long chat.
A couple of weeks later, with positive reports from OC Trg Flt and everyone else, I endorsed her as Sup(T) ... within 18 months of leaving CATCS, with loads of talent, and a bloody fine officer to boot. I was brave, she was good, and we both took a dive into the deep water together. She was superb. You can either do it, or you can't. She could, excellently! Hope you read this, Liz xxx