ATC Simulator: Unforgettable Events

[veloo maniam]

Hi Guardians of the skies....
I was once a trainer at the Aviation Training College
and had some unforgettable moments during final checks.
I am beginning with one and hope to see more being added.
There was this young cadet who was very tensed during his aerodrome finals.
The check officer placed a safety vehicle (c/sign Safety One) on the runway while an aircraft has been cleared to land by him. He noticed it at the very last moment and in his haste of decision making this is what he said:
QUOTE
SAFETY ONE MAINTAIN RUNWAY HEADING CLEARED FOR IMMEDIATE TAKE-OFF UNQUOTE.

[mgahan]

Circa 1979 in the old tower simulator in East Sale (RAAF). CDF is on a visit and expected to visit the simulator. Students briefed that when the General arrives they are to keep working AND MAKE NO MISTAKES.

CDF arrives; "Morning Sir, welcome to the tower simulator. Cadet Bill Bart...(oops he's still operational in AsA) is managing the tower traffic. "

"Ah", says CDF (wearing wings because he had some (but not much) experience in Army rotary wing), "Always good to see a well managed circuit."

This distracted Bill somewhat - must have been the witty repartee - and he missed an inbound call. Inbound call was repeated and Billy lost the plot completely: "All aircraft on this frequency ORBIT LEFT!"

If I can find the picture taken that very minute by the duty Photog I'll post it so you can see the bemused expression on the General's face and the "you're one step closer to civilian life" look on my face.

Several beers that night for MJG paid by the cadet.

MJG

[archiewood]

I used to be a sim pilot at a certain college in the west of Great Britain. The instructor briefed us before an LVP exercise that he wanted to practice a local standby. Unfortunately there was only one fire vehicle available in this exercise, so it wouldn't be very realistic.

Unlike some sim software where you can create vehicles and aircraft at will, in this sim what you started an exercise with was what you got. Fortunately you could also make any vehicle/aircraft look like any other vehicle/aircraft, so I found a spare parked aircraft, a PA28, and snuck it round the back of the tower to the fire section, keeping it out of sight of the tower.

At the same time, the student was taxiing a DHC8 for departure. Just as it was lined up, the student called the local standby. I tapped the button to change my spare PA28 into a fire vehicle, and got the fire combine into position. You can probably see where this is going.

The student cleared the DHC8 for takeoff and I started it rolling. With the low vis the threshold was not visible from the tower -- which was closer to the midpoint -- but as the DHC8 slowly came into view, it became obvious what I had done.

As the unmistakeable bright red fire engine raced down the runway with its blue flashing lights and gracefully lifted off, the student deadpanned..."Fire one, you are NOT cleared for take-off."

We had to stop the clocks there because everyone was laughing too much.

[oldandbald]

At the ATC College where I was Instructor a little while ago the Aerodrome Sim allowed the Trainees to look up the ICAO designators and handwrite them on the strips so they could pass the correct departure clearance when required. It won’t need much imagination to see how one female trainee had hurriedly written the decode for KDFW and transmitted “ XXXXX CLEARED TO DALLAS FOR WHAT ITS WORTH………..” :)

[undervaluedATC]

A long time ago at the college ("academy" these days) during the covert hi-jack exercise one of the trainees was getting a bit flustered with the other scripted calls interrupting his response to ascertaining if hi-jack was genuine or not (no calls yet, only the code), so makes the call "All stations stop transmitting, suspected hi-jack"

The TGO quick-as-a-flash responds "capitalist scum, you die now!" and that was the end of the exercise for trainee.

[veloo maniam]

Many years ago while I was manning a tower far away from the city, two top gun police officers arrived in the tower for a mock-up simulation for a hijack situation.The local officer was so eager to present his ideas to his superior. He was briefing how/and where the team was going to instruct the hijacked airplane to be parked and the covert operations of the commandos was going to take place. While the superior was so impressed with the methodology, my colleague coolly turned to the superior officer and told him politely "Sir, in a hijack situation, you dont tell the hijacker what to do, you just obey what he tells you to do"
Two red faced police officers left the tower in a haste.:ugh:

[Hempy]

Trainee: "QFA1054, confirm you are on your present heading?"

SSO: "QFA1054...umm affirm!"

[stevep64]

SSO: Rex153 heavy...
Took me a while to get back and confirm he was, or was not heavy, but Rex 153 is a SAAB 340.
SSO: oops system error.
I just assumed they were testing me.:)

[scarecrow450]

Was a 'blip driver' for the RAF a few years back, called up in a balloon for FIS. Stude asked where was I heading, err where ever the wind takes me !!!

[P6 Driver]

Unforgettable for me was the constant chirping from the instructor, asking "What's your plan?" every ten seconds (or so it seemed).

Also unforgettable at Shawbury (sorry, I forgot it's trendy to refer to places as "A secret place near the Wrekin") was the amount of cheating that went on.

For instance, in the days before VISSIM, the tower sim was an instructor on an isolated booth and the stude in front of him/her with an airfield representation and a pin board. One exercise was to have a Bulldog calling up to say they were carrying out PFL's. The tower controller would respond to the effect of "Report climbing away". If the Bulldog didn't check in within five minutes, the instructor would instigate a crash off the airfield or something similar to further ruin your day and sim slot, if the stude didn't call the Bulldog themselves to check all was OK.

The answer lay in the digital watch in your trouser pocket set, before the session started, with a four minutes and thirty seconds countdown alarm. Once the Bulldog called up, the stude simply (and secretively) pushed the button and when the alarm went, pushed the button to stop it. You then had thirty seconds to get a call in to the Bulldog. Job jobbed, and never got caught, as the instructor couldn't hear the alarm, which was fairly low key!

The watch was handed to different students on the course as they went into the sim As a result of this, not many failed to call the Bulldog when I went through JATCC. Any other dodges people want to confess to?

[topdrop]

At sim debrief, trainee was told by instructor that 1000+ pax had died. Trainee comes back with "if that 737 ran into that Friendship, then the 737 could not have hit the subsequent aircraft - that's only 150 dead" Said trainee went on to gain his ratings.

[Gulfstreamaviator]

One of the best lines ever...... thank you....

My wife also a captain, has quote along the lines of: Honey in the Cess pit, and when she flies with another young lady it is :the Honeypit.

glf