Approach radar courses

[fddffgdfggg]

Hi guys I'm new here - nice to meet you all

I believe that there are some Approach Radar courses that you can take at either Cardiff or Bournemout. The one I'm after is the non-NATS one. Can anyone tell me what this is and where to find out more documentation about it - Bournemouth's web site seems non existent?

thanks

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Here's your starter for 10...
BAE Systems Cwmbran Training College (http://www.cwmbrancollege.com/civil.html)

So far as I know - and that's not much - the NATS College at Hurn only takes it's own trainees or those sponsored by other organisations. I don't believe they take private students..

[bottom rung]

Try googling ASTAC at Gloucestershire airport as well.

[CLAMES]

But Google VV Approach first .....

[separation]

VV approach - $1250 :eek:

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Hmmmm... DIY eh? Using a PC eh? Not sure I'd spend that much on such a system.

[fddffgdfggg]

thanks guys - is it correct that there are NATS Approach radar courses and non-NATS approach radar courses? and if so which is better?

thanks

[fddffgdfggg]

also guys i got told that the course i should be taking is one that costs 14,000 pounds to take - is this correct or is it nonsense?

thanks!

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

So far as i am aware, you will only get on to a NATS course if you are accepted for employment by NATS, or you are sponsored by an employer. Having been a NATS ATCO, my personal opinion is that NATS is the best.

[CLAMES]

HD,

Hmmmm... DIY eh? Using a PC eh? Not sure I'd spend that much on such a system.

How can you discard new technology so flippantly? Have you tried VV Approach? Times are changing, but unfortunately you are not keeping up with them. From this post and others you present yourself as a Yesterday Man desperately trying to retain past glories. You should not prejudice the future of young aspirants to ATC with uninformed comments like this.

CLAMES

[Barnaby the Bear]

So far as i am aware, you will only get on to a NATS course if you are accepted for employment by NATS, or you are sponsored by an employer. Having been a NATS ATCO, my personal opinion is that NATS is the best.

Understandably perhaps, but a slightly bias view. :E

The other courses available are at Cwmbran (BAE systems) or Gloucester (ASTAC).
NATS at Bournemouth, but I also understand its for NATS cadets only. Non-NATS airfields used to send ATCO's for training, but I don't know if that happens anymore with the other colleges available.
As an individual self sponsorship (expensive and financially risky if you don't have the aptitude) you would be looking at Cwmbran or ASTAC.

All courses and colleges (NATS and Non-NATS) are regulated by the CAA and have to provide an approved course and standard of instruction.
When I was at Bournemouth there were many instructors who had instructed at non-NATS colleges or worked for non-NATS establishments prior to joining NATS CATC.

IF you graduate and subsequently validate at/from a non NATS establishment, you are in no way inferior as an ATCO because it was non NATS. You would have demonstrated an ability to satisfy the requirements of an ATC licence at that unit following completion of an approved Unit Training Plan. :ok:

I am sure the simulator is wonderful, but it is (in my opinion) a complete waste of money if you want to use it as a tool to become a real ATCO. The colleges are there to give you that foundation, and to teach you the 'book' way to do it. They will relieve you of enough cash anyway. Simulators and instructors are included! :8

Around £15000 seems about right.

[Booville Monroe]

I am sure the simulator is wonderful, but it is (in my opinion) a complete waste of money if you want to use it as a tool to become a real ATCO. The colleges are there to give you that foundation, and to teach you the 'book' way to do it. They will relieve you of enough cash anyway. Simulators and instructors are included!

Trouble is, you can't learn practical ATC from a book, and instructors are (often) operating from different pages.

[RADARVECTORING]

fddffdgdfggg,

My course cost £16,000 and I learned far more from VV, that's what got me the validation. PM me if you want to discuss.:D

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<How can you discard new technology so flippantly? Have you tried VV Approach? Times are changing, but unfortunately you are not keeping up with them. From this post and others you present yourself as a Yesterday Man desperately trying to retain past glories. You should not prejudice the future of young aspirants to ATC with uninformed comments like this.>>

Thanks for your rudeness. I have no "past glories" that I am aware of! There is nothing uninformed about my comments. They threw out the old simulators where I worked 20 years ago and went for a "PC style" approach. They now train controllers on proper simulators.

I am prepared to listen to any arguments and discuss them sensibly. However, one questions whether a busy ATC ops room can be adequately simulated on the kitchen table? Please explain where I am wrong?

[Barnaby the Bear]

I validated following instruction at the college, a good Unit Training Plan back at my unit, hard work on my part and good OJTI's.
I'm £1250 better off too as I didn't buy a home sim. :ok:

I am sure a home sim has its place, but I didnt need one and I don't personally know of anybody else that has.
i also know of people that didnt get through validation. I'm not sure a home sim would have helped them either.
My point being that it is not the norm to have to shell out an extra £1250 to aid becoming a valid APS ATCO. If you feel it will help, then thats for you alone to decide. :8

[alfaman]

Two key points to note before spending any money:
1) there is a difference between a CBT package & a simulator - the first may help in some ways, or may not - it may be a learning tool or just a bit of fun: the second will be fully supported, tested & regulated by the authority which will be issueing your licence, via the licence the training provider operates under. Those supplying the first often use the term without understanding the differences.
2) under UK regs, you will need to undertake an appropriately regulated course at an approved training provider: you may not "self study" & just pitch up to take the exams.

[CLAMES]

Barnaby,

You are indeed fortunate if you went through ATC training easily, the majority find it a very stressful experience - all because of the way it is done. The major problems are the need to learn multiple work methods to satisfy different instructors' requirements and, most importantly, the fact that there is a time limit to training. In that, ATC is unique in the world. Training for any other profession, people know that, if the worst happens and they fail an exam, they can take extra lessons and re-sit. ATC trainees have their entire career hanging on every exam, and that is incredibly stressful for most. As I said, you are blessed if you didn't experience it.

What VV Approach does is teach people a structured operating model, one the student will have perfected over probably hundreds of hours of practice before they enter formal training, either abinitio or cross-stream to Approach Radar. Once solid subconscious processing of traffic has been mastered it is very easy to adapt to variations to the model. Look at what Flight Simulator and its associated training packages have done for pilot training and relate it to ATC. Never before has that been done and that is why ATC training is so outdated.

alfaman,

Could I just ask that you broaden your thinking. There is no suggestion that people train by CBT then lob for an examination. That will never occur, just like no pilot gets a licence without many hours of actual flying. But the skills required to do that flying can in part be learned from Flight Sim and the like, saving the student countless expensive lessons and allowing him/her to develop sound subconscious skills before ever taking a formal lesson. Also, it gives him/her that vital and elusive quality confidence - they can see they have mastered the most difficult job in ATC - complex sequencing of high-speed aircraft - and nothing that formal training asks of them will seem difficult. No trainee pilot ever has any difficulty adapting pre-learned skills to what a live instructor tells them to do, they have learned an operating model upon which they build.

Thank you both for this discussion, you raise the very issues that need to be addressed if ATC training is ever to be modernised.

CLAMES

[Roffa]

Look at what Flight Simulator and its associated training packages have done for pilot training and relate it to ATC.

Ingrained many bad habits that real instructors have had to get their students to unlearn, at extra time and cost. That's what the flying instructors that I know have said about games such as MSFS anyway.

Aren't you getting some naughty free advertising out of this thread?

[Barnaby the Bear]

You are indeed fortunate if you went through ATC training easily

I don't remember saying it was easy? I remember saying I worked hard and following the intial approved course had followed a good approved UTP backed up with good experienced OJTI's.

I am saying to fddffgdfggg, be very, very careful about spending an extra £1250 on a simulator that you give the impression is a necessary tool to enable success. My experience and that off many others I know is that they did not need one.
Some people will never validate even if they pass the initial course. A home simulator won't change that.
Has this simulator been approved by the authority as a legitimate aid? :=

[elandel]

Aren't you getting some naughty free advertising out of this thread?

Roffa,

Well spotted! Not sure about any of this PC stuff - whats a whirlpool? - never heard of that in 25 years in ATC. This might go down well in Oz but I'm not so sure about Blighty.
I for one prefer Brens approach.

[Curlyw]

The Truth is ... that Flight Sim is the most valuable tool for gaining ratings and skills that has ever been invented. My flight Sim Set Up has three screens, with Matrox Tripplehead2Go, Control Yoke and Rudder Pedals.

It is because of the hundreds of hours, I've spent doing NDB Approaches, VOR/DME Approaches and ILS's, with the Vis set to the minimum, that I've been able to be really really current, and master the skills. The Casa examiner rescently described my performance to the CFI as "Fauntless". My wife came out to the aerodrome after the test and the examiner told her that I'm one of the best he has seen, and that he would let me loose in cloud any time, with not the slightest worry.

There is not doubt about it, that this is not outstanding ability on my part, but the continued practice, practice, pracetice that I did over many months leading up to the final test. I'm no star, but if I hang in there, I can usually master whatever it is.

As I played back the diagram of where I'd been, I could see the effect the various winds set had on things like holding patterns, analyse them in my mind, and apply less bank turning into wind, and more turning downwind, and how much drift to lay off in any given wind situation, without having to resort to the "maths" of it all. Just like VV, you learn "how to do it", subconscious mind stuff. It helps too in Orientation ... it does help if you know exactly what part of the Approach you are on at any time ... and on all the local approaches around here, I don't need the charts, and could do them, as I know all the numbers and figures as second nature,, due to the practice I've done.

Take a simple thing like take off. On Flight sim, you run through the checklist, taxi onto the runway, apply power, keep the aircraft straight as it wants to yaw to the left, because of the twisting motion of the propellor, and the "wind" it generates which goes from the prop, round underneath the aircraft, and hits the tail surface, L.H. Side of the aircraft and makes it want to weathercock to the left. Just a little right rudder to hold it straight is all that is required.

Landings are the same. You can come around onto final, and get to the point where everyone has difficulty, which is the last 200 ft, and "save" that scenario, returning to it any time. In the course of an hour, you could probably do 60 touchdowns ... in the plane, you might do 6. You can do a Playback of each landing, and again analyise it, so appropriate improvements can be made. Of course it goes without saying, that a good approacyh is needed for a good landing, and approaches can be practiced over and over too.

Navigation. The Australian scenery packages with lakes, mountains, towns, aerodromes and Nav Aids are so realistic, that before I go anywhere I haven't been before, I'll do the Flight Plan, the "fly the mission", with a Map on my knee, and observe all the prominent topigraphical features and Nav Aids enroute, so when I do the actual flight, it's the second time I've done it, and I've fallen into all the traps at home, rather than out in the aircraft, and know what I'm expecting to see..

Before each IFR Training Nav Flight, I'd "fly the mission" a number of times, and I knew the frequencies, best places to do everything, get operating sequences right ... it was a real Godsend.

ILS's. You have two VHF radio's in the panel, and they need to be set up like this.

COM 2. To have Home Aerodrome 118.8 and Radar 125.7.
COM 1. To have APP 124.7 and TWR 120.5.

The sequence is this. Start off on 118.8, broadcast when changing to Radar 125.7, and call them, get identified etc.

When they say "Contact Approach 124.7, you have that already set up on COM 1, so you select Com 1, call them, and at some point they tell you to call Tower. This is where the Approach can fall apart, and you can quickly get out of tolerance by having your attention diverted, so having TWR 120.5 also on Com 1, with the Flip Flop button right there, you can still concentrate on the instruments, put your hand up to the radio, quickly glance as you push the flip flop button, call Tower, and only be a microsecond away from what you are doing, which is folying the aircraft. If you have to stuff around, changing frequency selector knobs etc, you will fail your test by drifting out of tolerance. The examiner will not bring you round for a second go, you either pass or fail.

The CFI puts many candidates up for tests, and he said that those with flight sim are so far ahead of those who haven't got it ... because it gives recency, currency, and skills that are easily lost, are retained.

Then you can add in a crosswind, light at first, increasing to over the max allowed for that type of aircraft, developing the "crossed controls" technique as second nature, when landing the aircraft. Some people never master this.

The same with VV, the ATC radar vectoring training program. I have probably spent over 100 hours going through all these lessons, just to improve my own skills. It is over 40 years since I did my ATC Course, during which time Ive had "Check Controller" experience, plus 16 years training, both Ab Initio and Sector Specific.

My assessment of the VV Course is ... it is a really great tool, for learning radar vectoring, sequencing and separation. Going through each lesson in sequence, and staying on each exercise til that particular skill is mastered, is something I'd recommend to anyone going on to an ATC Course. If a sequence is stuffed up, you can "rewind" the program, and change whatever is needed to get the sequence right, which is 3 or 5 miles between aircraft, when the leading one touches down.

With the advent some years ago, of the home PC, the VV program is in my opinion, the best.

[Barnaby the Bear]

This thread is turning into a sales pitch for this simulator.

RADARVECTORING has only (bar one) ever posted about it and Clames also. :rolleyes:

[alfaman]

alfaman,

Could I just ask that you broaden your thinking. There is no suggestion that people train by CBT then lob for an examination. That will never occur, just like no pilot gets a licence without many hours of actual flying. But the skills required to do that flying can in part be learned from Flight Sim and the like, saving the student countless expensive lessons and allowing him/her to develop sound subconscious skills before ever taking a formal lesson. Also, it gives him/her that vital and elusive quality confidence - they can see they have mastered the most difficult job in ATC - complex sequencing of high-speed aircraft - and nothing that formal training asks of them will seem difficult. No trainee pilot ever has any difficulty adapting pre-learned skills to what a live instructor tells them to do, they have learned an operating model upon which they build. - my thinking is fine, thanks for asking - you might like to read my post again: my answer relates to the OPs question, since she/he's are interested in what would help them now, not a generic question about ATC training in general. I suggest you save that for another thread...or pay Pprune for an advert...

[Roffa]

Curlyw, your sales pitch is undoubtedly as "Fauntless" as your mastery of flight sim.

I am truly impressed and duly humbled.

[CLAMES]

roffa et al,

I have no experience with Flight Sim, I base my comments on what I am told by flying friends. It is seen as a worthwhile aid to training by that fraternity and I know for a fact that it is being used by at least one US university in its pilot training course. But, there is a small minority who bag it relentlessly. They are the insecure ones who feel threatened by new technology. The threat must be repelled. It is not enough to say 'it doesn't teach as well as I can', it must be more dramatic and fear-invoking: 'undo bad habits'. The louder it is shouted the better. Fortunately, people who resist new technology eventually fall by the wayside, or we would still be lining up in banks to get cash and posting cheques to pay our bills.

You question my motivation in conducting this debate without any knowledge of what you are bagging, I must question yours.

CLAMES.

[Roffa]

I don't think I have too many issues with new technology given the changes seen in my ATC career thus far.

To the best of my knowledge our (NATS) training college uses standalone basic skills trainers where students practice basic skills without direct instructor input.

When it comes to more advanced training however, like our airline training counterparts*, the involved human instructor is still very much in situ and this is a situation I would not expect to see changing in the foreseeable future.

By all means tout your product whilst PPRuNe lets you and, in the meantime and admittedly without any knowledge of your product whatsoever, just let me suggest to anyone applying for NATS training in the UK to save their money and instead wait to enter the training system without any preconceived ideas of knowing it all already or having picked up stuff that will have to be unlearned.

CLAMES, if you think your product really is as good as you claim, arrange to put it in front of the professionals in the NATS training organisation for their considered opinion. I'm sure if they think it will add value to NATS training then they will make you an offer... That's got to be better than just trying to get potentially gullible wanabees here to part with cash they may not be able to afford for an unproven product of uncertain value.

Just as a matter of interest can you tell me which ANSPs have already signed up to the ANSP edition?

* who are usually further down the 'advances' road than their ATC colleagues so would expect to see changes there first.

[CLAMES]

The airline industry certainly is a long way ahead of ATC in adopting new technology, and for a very good reason - they operate in a commercial environment, ATC training doesn't. The way it is delivered is unchanged since the 1930s - one person showing another what to do. The computer-based training colleges do use is indeed very basic as far as I have seen. The real training is done manually.

While your attitude to change continues it will never happen in ATC training. We have indeed presented our package to NATS and I would rather not discuss the result publicly, PM me if you want to know.

The people you describe as gullible wannabes are in fact quality young people who simply want a worthwhile career, and to describe them as such belittles them. The face a daunting task just being selected and then again in training. It is they who will benefit from any improvement in the system and needless obstacles should not be put in their way. You seem to be concerned that I am out to rip them off, when in fact the exact opposite is the case. A major motivation in spending years producing VV was to change a system that I watched destroy many young lives, I could not live with the thought that I had defrauded anyone, and that is what a money-back guarantee is all about. You keep quoting pounds instead of dollars, by the way, I hope that is not intentional.

There I go .... making another commercial. We do advertise on this site, by the way.

[Curlyw]

Not a "Sales Pitch" for this course at all ... but an ATC course at any of the Schools that teach ATC can be extremely difficult, and the skills must be mastered "in the time frame allotted" ... I

f you can get ANY course on a CD that you can practice over and over at home, to give you judgement, and the learning outcomes this particular course does ... my advice to any candidate would be ... Grab it.

What Flight Sim did for me ... a course such as VV can do for anyone coming along into ATC.

Great to be on P Prune ... I'm more than happy to answer any queries on ATC training, to be of help to those coming along.

[bottom rung]

I'm currently in the second week of an approved APS course, busy revising for the written summatives so I can't enter a lengthy discourse. Suffice to say that there are a number of cheap or free programs around that can provide vectoring practice for multiple targets. Once you get to the third or fourth day on the sim, the runs are tailored so specifically to the subject airspace using precisely set rt and procedures that I can see a real problem unlearning bad habits. When the red mist comes down it is too easy to slip back to familiar but incorrect phrases and methods. My advice would be to perhaps get a little vectoring practice if you feel you need it, and then get on an approved course with an open and empty mind, ready to fill it with the copious amounts of specific instruction and guidance on offer.

[Barnaby the Bear]

Precisely. A number of cheap or free programs out there that can help practice vectoring. The instructors will fill in the rest... And they do.

Save your pennies :ok: