A vital component here is currency.
I am now into my 35th year as an Air Defender and changes over the last 15 years has been dramatic. You can talk all all you like about process and procedure but you cannot teach experience. That comes from hands on practice, and lots of it. In the 80s I could look at a radar picture of the North Sea and it would be chocker with Mil activity. Today (literally), it's like 'Where'e Walt'.
Simulation is the drug of choice and I would say we are at, or close to, an 80/20 split in favour of simulation. Don't get me wrong, the new simulators are excellent but there is no substitute for the real thing.
In the 80s, as an instructor, I could get a student controller at least 2 live sorties a day. A mixture of control levels and a mixture of airspace activity to deal with. Today, 3 a week is considered good but they will do another 7 or so on the simulator so the spread sheet looks good. Once qualified they join a queue as the flying available goes to the students. Skill fade is quick, especially when you add in a 4 month tour in the Falklands not long after qualification. It is a vicious circle.
When it comes to active towlines, and we don't get that many anymore, they are active danger areas and should be treated as such. Irrespective of Radar Service requested in Class G airspace they should be coordinated and restrictions enforced. As a Tanker controller, once I had taken over the joining aircraft and they were 2 way with the Tanker, it was the Tanker Capt who had primacy. Have to admit I am out of the loop a little as to current procedures.
The RAF has shrunk beyond recognition and we are trying to do the same with less. One of the casualties is, and will always be, currency and experience. That is the same, I would say, no matter what your specialisation. The days that ORAC described are well and truly gone.
Last edited by Wyler; 27th Jul 2017 at 11:34.