Ha Ha Ha, We're off to Kandahar!

[radarman]

Following an ad in this week's 'Flight', I logged on to the website of a certain ATC employment agency in High Wycombe, and found that the SATCO, DSATCO, 3 Watch supervisors, and 5 radar controllers have already been appointed. And the NATO contract hasn't been awarded yet :confused:
So, my fellow PPRuNers, who are you lucky guys that are in line to start collecting your £83,000? Come on, own up, we know you are out there.
(Mods: Please give this humble thread a couple of days before sucking it into your black hole, like the two previous K.....r threads. :} )

[man friday]

its nice to see that the "company" recruiting for this once in a lifetime ( however short that lifetime may turn out to be) is not wasting much money on his advertising budget.
one and a half square inches of advert in flight must be a sign that this prospective employer is keeping unecessary expense down in order to pay those £83 k wages !!

[Fox3snapshot]

Think you will find that 83,000 quid figure is a little far fetched....:hmm:

[man friday]

sorry, should that have been £83k plus a spare wheel cover for a 4x4

[badgerbaiter]

.....and if you can point him in the direction of some surplus radar kit, I'm sure he'll pop a bonus in the wage packet!!!

[PPRuNe Radar]

(Mods: Please give this humble thread a couple of days before sucking it into your black hole, like the two previous K.....r threads. :} )

The thread will stay as long as it does not stray the way of the previous two ... namely no advertising, and no personal slanging matches. You might just reach a couple of days then, as requested ;) :E

[SayAgainSally]

Anyone know what is going on with the NATO contract and if anyone else is bidding etc? :confused:

Fox3 you normally have your ear close to the ground :D

Cheers
SAS

[Fox3snapshot]

That's cause I am normally asleep in the gutter!!! :}

Haven't been able to fathom too much on the other bidder...if in fact there is one???!

A summer deployment too...joy of joys!! :\

[SayAgainSally]

Thanks for that.

As we did not really have a summer here in the land of the long white cloud this year, I am looking forward to twisting by the pool in Kandahar ;)

SAS

[Fox3snapshot]

Gfaw, Gfaw! Good luck mate, blurry hard to swim with a couple of kevlar plates strapped to your front and back.....

:cool:

[chevvron]

You mean SERCo haven't put in a bid? That'll be a first.

[BurglarsDog]

I belive that Kellogs Root Brown are the other bidder / main player; Dick Chain*ys Mob? Let me see ; an American modus Operandi up for contract to either a smallish company (in the case of supplying large ATCO numbers) and a completely different way of doing ATC (BRITMIL), or give the contract to the company already running everything else on base? That said the Ozzies are on their way to manage some airspace according to our local rag. Fighter Controllers I think, but it wasnt made that clear. End of the day the Ozzy Mil ATC could take on the contract; as in Somalia / East Timor; provide a safe service and cost NATO bugger all! And there is a Q of people waiting to go; on account of the tax free pay and generous allowances the Oz government pay the Mil (unlike GB!!). I think 6 months worth is equal to about a A$40K bonus !! Just have to close a few bases and hope ASA can pick up the slack - but Hey ... some commercial aircraft already land without ATC at night when the Mil have knocked off at 2200; So perhaps no one would know the difference!!:eek:
Time will tell.
Good luck to all the players and may you all get what you wish for!
DogGone

[Fox3snapshot]

Kellogg Brown Root (KBR) (the UK arm)...pffft gfaw! :*

No such thing, still a US company and you are bidding on a piggy back system and that's why you set the conditions of service as you did because they stipulated the requirements...you didn't!

Good luck mate, you are going to need it....:sad:

[radarman]

Fox3,
Actually, there is a UK branch of Kellogg, Brown Root. It's in Leatherhead, Surrey, but the website says it deals in development of offshore driiling, pipework and oil exploration. Nothing mentioned about ATCO's, but these international conglomerates are pretty incestuous, so the UK branch could well be dealing with Gisajob. Even though the contract is in Afg.....tan.
By the way, read post #6 from the mods. We're doing OK so far, but I reckon your last post may get us all sucked into Midland Radar's overhead again, just like the last two K.....ar threads. :E

[chevvron]

Funny I was sure gisajob had a reply here yesterday, now it's gone.

[WildWesterner]

Unless Fox3 imagined a message to reply to..... no, I didn't think so!!

WW :)

[Fox3snapshot]

Whilst I do have a vivid imagination...I certainly didn't respond to my mind talking out loud (at least I hope not or I will change my medication! :E ).

Not sure where his post went....:hmm:

[BurglarsDog]

The MIA post did actually clarify a few things. I for one was under the impression that "SafeSkies was bidding for a stand alone contract' . Consequently I seriously doubted whether they would be competitive especially when considering the other player - KRB. However I now stand corrected / informed, that KRB is the main player and SS are just a sub contractor - endeavouring to create a viable ATC workforce to fulfill a sub contractual bid/ arrangement. If they have won/agreed that sub contract with KRB, and are not just tendering with others to KRB , then I would now think that they are in a good position to almost start counting their chickens. Just a case of getting all their chickens/ ducks in a row before any start date. I wish them well; and if nothing comes of it at least it has given quite a few UK Mil ATCO's in particular, some excitement, hoping that they may be able to leave their current uniformed job and work as ATC elsewhere in the world without completely retraining. Job opps for purely ex mil controllers have always been few and far between. In my day, in order to spread your ATC wings a bit, you had to either fly well south ( and then put on another uniform ) or talk to the nice gentlemen at Hurn with your chequebook in hand.

DogGone:ok:

[SayAgainSally]

Anyone know if Safe Skys got the contract?

Cheers

SAS

[radarman]

SAS,
If my memory serves me correctly, the missing post from Gisajob said that the decision was originally planned for May 7th, but was likely to be postponed till the beginning of June.

PS. It's Safeskies, not Safe Skys. Gisa tore me off a strip for querying his weird spelling.

[SayAgainSally]

1) Cheers for that

2) Oooooops - oh yes I remember that now, :) and

3) will remember for next time.

SAS

[cottam approach]

You were right the first time; it's Safeskys

[workingatco]

It is SAFESKYS or that well known Polish company SAFF ESSS SKEES

HINT (You need to know the joke about the origin of the company name. ) Ask gisajob


It is a tribute to LLoyd Brown's original company Skysafe !!

[Myway or the highway]

all
just checked the SS website (dont know how reliable it is) but they say decision due today, Fri 3 May...we,ll see.

I know one of the other bidders is Midwest ATC who currently manage/operate the Kabul contract which includes approach/twr/area (procedural for Afghan FIR).

I would suspect they would have the inside running with runs already on the board.

by the way Fox and SAS and others did you guys get the nod or not? PM me if you like.

rgds

Myway

[ferris]

Post here so all of us interested can be saved the "PM avalanche".

[Fox3snapshot]

Well are we....?????!!!! All gone very quiet.

Good timing though, just in time for the summer offensive which is starting to wind up quiet nicely....:bored:

[SayAgainSally]

No not me, and to be honest, I am a little relieved as my initial concerns have not been allayed. I mean working in Kandahar is just not the same as say working in the UK, NZ, Oz etc is it? I would want to be working for a company that has done this sort of thing before and has the infrastructure to support such an undertaking. That said I guess this could be the big break SS is looking for, and I wish them well.

Anyway, the hot goss around here is that two from our (New Zealand) civil/mil sector have had job offers, and that one other is very interested.

Of the two offered, one's mother is not well, and so the smart money is on him not accepting just yet. The other, I understand is in the simulator for a while, with a new sector trainee, and so no one has been able to catch up with what is going on there.

I see from the SS website to day that the decision has been delayed AGAIN :uhoh:

SAS

[BurglarsDog]

Concur.. good luck to Safeskys. No news is sometimes better than bad news. And for all those ATCO's willing and able that have volunteered and have been offered a tentative position ,, hope still lives... which is always a good thing I reckon!!

As an aside my local paper today highlighted the fact that the RAAF was about to deploy / establish a mobile ATC radar unit at Kandahar ??
Comments anyone??

DogGone (back to his basket by the aircon):ok:

[Fox3snapshot]

Well if the RAAF is sending the mobile radar control unit, they have a well qualified team that goes with it. This combined with their experience in Somalia, Iraq, Timor and the Solomons to mention a few theatres, there will be no need for overpriced civil contractors :rolleyes:

Whether the RAAF has the resources and the mandate...well that's another story :ooh:

A sneaky peak at what makes up the RAAF Surveillance and Reconnaisance Group....

http://www.defence.gov.au/RAAF/organisation/groups/srg.htm

[HamoAus]

As workingatco has said, it's an air defence capability, not air traffic:}

[Fox3snapshot]

:hmm: .........if you know anything about radars you will know that if you have an Air Defense radar you actually have a far more capable system. In fact I wish on a daily basis here in the middle east we had a patch to the air defense radar to extrapolate height data on the numerous unidentified targets that regularly reap havoc with our civil traffic.

In Oman during the peak of the Afghan campaign I would regularly ask our military compatriots behind us if they could give us a height readout on US traffic that had turned up on the doorstep not talking to anyone running into the hundreds of paying punters with no mode C...or better still not tickling up the parrot at all!

My last ATC unit in Oz with the military used a derivative of an Air Defense radar and it did a fantastic job...in fact that was 14 years ago and it is still better than the cr*p we use here in UAE control!

:rolleyes:

[Fox3snapshot]

Not sure you read the duty statement...

No 44 Wing (44WG), headquartered at RAAF Base Williamtown, commands all of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) detachments of which there are eleven across Australia. 44WG also commands the ATC Technical Ground Electronic Services (GES) workforce. 44WG through its detachments is responsible for the delivery of aerodrome and radar control services to Army, Navy and Air Force and also for the provision of tactical control of forward airfields, battlefield aviation and other airspace activity, both within Australia and for operational deployments. 44WG personnel have been actively involved in a number of recent operations including Sudan, East Timor, Iraq/Middle East, Solomon Islands and Indonesia. Their roles have ranged from active operational duties to peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.



OK so they forgot Mogadishu International, I will forgive them for that, and as we were the first operational deployment since Vietnam...a little dissapointed :{ Not to worry, the guys and gals do a great job.

workingatco is that you gisajob ??!!! :E

[somniferous]

Fox3snapshot,

I think you will find what HamoAus is refering to is the fact that although it is an air defence radar system, the only controllers going are air defence controllers. Last time I checked they weren't too good on the keeping the aircraft apart thing!

The AD radar may be better than what the ATC get, but it ain't much good to ATC if they aren't sitting in front of it.

Somniferous

[Fox3snapshot]

The RAAF would deploy their ATC element with the radar. The same fundamental element that was the backbone of Baghdad International and the many other theaters that since October 1993 we have been formally involved in post Vietnam!

Air Defense, why the stuff would you need Air Defense controllers in Afghanistan or Iraq when you have no air threat and nothing to point the fighters at!

The Afghan and Iraq theater from an Air Defense perspective is in reality more of a tactical air theater management capability and is still carried out by E3's and the like. We launch them every day and they are essentially managing the different quadrants of operation.


Geez, you really need to do some more homework on this one. If the RAAF sent Air Defendo's to Afganistan it will only be to get them out of their mossy, humid, and ego saturated bunkers to get some sunshine!! :E

[HamoAus]

RAAF ATC aren't going, that's about as simple as I can put it.
:}

[Fox3snapshot]

:D

Possibly not, but always enjoy the banter! :E

Yaaaawwwwn! Anyway must dash, off to Spain in the morning for the Grand Prix.....:zzz:

[somniferous]

Hmmm, so Fox3snapshot.... Which RAAF base are you currently posted to????

Perhaps you need to use one of your "ungrateful RAAF contacts" (see a previous - but yet mysteriously removed post about RAAFies not thanking you for information on your ME contacts) to clarify what two people in the know have told you.

I apologise to the other readers out there for my tirade.

Rant complete.

[BurglarsDog]

Thanks all.

Thats cleared that up then.:D

DogGone

[Green on, Go!]

Hamo,

You absolutely, positively certain about that???

[SayAgainSally]

From a reliable source - looks like the RAAF are going to get the nod - and probably the reason why the decision has been delayed, as it has been a bit of a short notice thing.

SAS

[Hold West]

Interesting - so does the Oz government get paid for providing RAAF services under the contract? Or is the contract not awarded because the RAAF is volunteering to do it?

[HamoAus]

SAS,
I don't think the RAAF can even provide enough controllers to run 24hr ops there. If they were going to get it, it would be in conjunction with another military force of ATC's. I reckon the contract will go ahead to a civil organisation, just like Kandahar up the road. In fact KBR already have the contract and are only looking for a sub-contractor to provide ATC services. As good as your info is, I don't think it's correct.

Hamo:}

[SayAgainSally]

My understanding is that the Oz Govt. is to get "compensation" for providing the service, and Hamo, that was what I thought :confused:

Going back to my source to-night to confirm, maybe it's just wishfull thinking on behalf of the RAAF.

Fox3 you motor head, where you when we need you, and the answer is not "in sunny Spain" :)

SAS

[SayAgainSally]

Source confirms there are "talks" going on within the RAAF about a deployment to Kandahar. Not sure exactly what that means, but evidently the talks are taking place very high up the food chain.

SAS

[Fox3snapshot]

Heh heh! No internet access where I was in sunny Spain, thank goodness though as the responses may have been soaked in Sangria :E

Now HamoAus and Somniferous where were we.....:}

[HamoAus]

where are you up to?

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

RAAF ATC aren't going, that's about as simple as I can put it.


HamoAus, weren't you about to eat some humble pie and say to fox3 that maybe you don't know as much as you think you do. And maybe somniferous was about to apologise for his misguided rant at Fox3. Ok we are all waiting.

[somniferous]

ANSA,

Let us all know when you have finished waiting.

[paib]

Well, there's two RAAF ATC about to leave or already on their way to the high hills and dim lights of Kandahar. I don't know why (I've been out of the big blue supermarket for a couple of years), but I suspect that, if AIRDEF is about to set up shop there, then the ATCO's are for liason/coordination and to make sure that the airdefendo's don't completely embarass themselves.
Or they could be an advance party to scout equipment levels, accomodation and the general set-up of the place prior to ATC deployment.
If RAAF ATC do go, I just hope it's not as part of a Combat Support Squadron type-set-up like was in Baghdad. What a joke that was. Sixty 'support' personnel whose only job was to whinge, whine and stamp their feet when they had to do anything outside of their 9 - 4 day (or anything at all for that matter); an attitude fully supported by the joke of an executive, led by a NAV CO. Better get back in my box before I smash my keyboard. At least the ATC was done well.

[HamoAus]

of eating humble pie, when they actually go you might have a case but until then the RAAF aren't going to Kandahar as ATC.

:}

[Fox3snapshot]

Still no news eh...???? :hmm:

If you do go you may need this.........

KANDAHAR MID AIR COLLISION AVOIDANCE (MACA)HANDBOOK

http://ramcc.dtic.mil/forms/Kandahar_MACA_Pamphlet.pdf

And don't forget:


'Wear of a weapon is mandatory with the exception of jogging or in the Fitness Tent' :E

[BurglarsDog]

:OWhats happened here then?

Who is still controlling at K ?

Anyone?

BD

[Fox3snapshot]

Heard along the grapevine that one of the NATO requirements is also EU citizenship....:rolleyes:

May throw a spanner in the works for the mob from down under that haven't managed to find their forefathers that stole a loaf of bread and got us sent to the colonies.....:p

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

Stole a loaf of bread....stole a carpet, same same :E

[Fox3snapshot]

:D Nice one.....;)

[Enlighten_Me]

I think you'll find the 83K figure will be quite easily explained away as: "I meant to put 8.3, that is, 8,300 per annum. No hang on, that's after training, it's 5,000 per annum until you go solo. No don't worry, you don't need any training or any security checks, I say you can go in that's that, I'm well respected me".:ugh:

[truth b told]

Dear God (or PPrune Towers)
please hear my prayer

God please let the kandahar gig goto somone else but SS
God please let all the ATCO's that applied work for any company but SS
God please make SS pay for advertising like everyone else
God please make SS provide quality equipment for its staff
God please change those silly vehicles that drive around my station for something fit for purpose
God please let all my fellow ATCO's sleep well knowing that they were all exposed and are now subject to whitch hunts

Thank you God (or PPrune Towers) for hearing my prayer

[BurglarsDog]

Moving on from the public slagging of SS ( which is a bit offside in my humble opinion), can anyone shed any light on what is going on in K at present; and what the future ATC plan for the place may be? I would very much doubt that the RAAF will be involved in any activity over there as they are very very short in the manning stakes at present: with one northern joint user base gapping all middle management (no SQNLDRS for several months) and having only 2.5 years average experience! Corporate knowledge there aint - but maybe thats food for another thread!

DogGone::E