Area Radar is suffering almost as badly as the Towers due to manning. The problem extends out to the RN ATC branch as well as the RAF - the requirement for QNLZ (& shortly PWLS) is only exacerbating this.

Having been involved in the early staffing for DE Sgts ATC, I understand that the uptake is still below expectations.

With due deference to Danny42C, I enjoyed all my 'operational' time in ATC on airfields (Strubby, Tengah,Waddington and Stanley) and in Area (Eastern x 2 and LATCC(Mil)). And whilst acknowledging the 'battery hen' term Danny uses, there was always something about the 'big picture' that made Area appealing. That said, there's no doubt that Local was my favourite seat [for many reasons].

airpolice (#39),

..."they make them Sgts now"...

I believe this is also true of the USAF, too (anybody know ?)


YellowTom (bell rings, but will not put it into words), (#40),

The mind boggles ! Calls to mind (closing stanzas only) ..........

"She said 'Wait - Let's get this straight,
Who does what, and with which, and to whom' ?"

Quite enough of that ! Cheers, both, Danny.

Had a thought; could this be the civil suite at Eastern after Lindholme had closed thus allowing for two sectors (North Sea and Mainland)? Eastern didn't close until much later did it?
We had one or two ex Eastern controllers posted to Farnborough mid '80s?

Eastern relocated to LAZI but still operated as Eastern Radar for a while.

But didn't Lindholme close several years before Watton? I think Lindholme went about '74/75 but I may be wrong, certainly some of my civilian colleagues in '73 had their posting notices although new controllers were still being posted in. What year did Watton Close?

Chevvron
 

IIRC Lindholme civil closed in '77 - I looked at the LL arrival date of one of the ATCOs who had been posted from there and again IIRC Eastern civil closed several years later. The atchistory website may have more info?

RAF ATM
 

The problems in the RAF ATM Specialisation are deep-rooted and are unlikely to be resolved by attempting to rapidly increase recruitment.

Whilst there is a financial incentive for those who wish to become a direct-entry SNCOs, nothing similar exists for those who join as an officer. I imagine many potential officers who attend AFCOs or Cranwell consider what career options are available and then decide that they would rather not put themselves through JATCC, followed by the endless training and examinations when they will be earning exactly the same as any other ground branch officer. Unsurprisingly they frequently opt for an easier career in Flt Ops, Supply, etc.

Trying to 'shoe-horn' individuals who are not really motivated into ATM is just repeating the same old failed 'solution' of once again papering over the cracks. Retention is the problem that urgently needs to be addressed if VSOs really want to find a solution, but it won't happen and we will continue to loose controllers to NATS and elsewhere.

One solution to recruiting and retention would be introducing a structured transition to a civil ATC licence. You could set the qualifying criteria at say a 12 year engagement, recovering the cost of training, whilst allowing the RAF to have the benefit of a cadre of young controllers who are motivated to stay the course. A correspondence course, with an on-line element, could be introduced to begin after 10 years service that would lead to a basic civil ATC licence, followed in the final year by an aerodrome course that would also include time at a civil ATC college. This solution would certainly act as an incentive to join and yet for personal domestic circumstances not everyone would want to leave the RAF, particularly if they wish to remain in a particular geographical area. Whilst there would be a cost, I would have thought the current wastage must be an even greater cost.

However, I am not holding my breath, as VSOs appear to place little value in the ATM specialisation in general and even less in the actual personnel. In the current climate, manning problems are only likely to get worse, not better.

I heard a rumour last week regarding young Warrant Officers being Commissioned and after 4 years being presented to the Board for Sqn Ldr, not sure what this does for Junior Officers in the Air Traffic Branch.

What JO's?

There’s no getting away from it, the branch is in trouble. It has over the last decade or two suffered infighting at the high echelons, neglect and downright mismanagement. There are now SO2s and SO1s making policy decisions, who years ago, could organise an amazing Summer Ball or Christmas Draw but were frankly dangerous if left alone in Director, Tower or Approach. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I cannot imagine the Pilot branch promoting to senior officer status personnel who were simply poor at their primary task.
I really fear for Mil ATC, it’s a matter of when, not if something big will bring everything into sharp focus. I just hope no one gets hurt.

Proletarian - we begged for the same type of licencing arrangements for pilots for many years to no avail.

The VSOs convinced themselves that licences would lead people to leave early for more lucrative positions in civvystreet.

Instead, people left early because they needed to get their licences and didn't want to be left behind. The evidence is writ large in the PVR rates.

You will have the same battle with ATC licences unfortunately.

The younger generation understand the importance of terms and conditions and until those VSOs can make the military competitive and attractive, recruiting and retention will continue to be an issue. Just look at what they have done to pensions....

Eastern Radar (Watton) closed in 1989. Much of the site was demolished for development in 2002 onwards. :(

Eastern's reincarnation at LATCC(Mil) doesn't count :D

You raise some interesting points: my comments are as follows:I'm not sure that I agree with the general thrust here. For a start, the motivations of a putative ATCO are going to be different to those of other Branches. Nor do I expect the individuals are aware, in any detail, of the time spent doing OJT and being examined at each Unit.

Whilst I have no doubt that AFCOs will attempt to steer candidates into career paths to meet their own manning requirements, I would be surprised if the individuals would be easily persuaded to change their perceived path. Why would they opt for something radically different [and potentially more demanding] from their first choice?
Several points here:

1. Amortisation of Training was, IIRC, achieved after the first productive tour as an ATCO, which is why we never worried too much about the loss of WRAF ATCOs on marriage.

2. Motivation to remain is surely [or at least was] the twin dangling carrots of promotion and pension. I appreciate that much has changed since my day, but even for the middle-of-the-road controllers it remained an interesting and rewarding role.

3. The facilitated acquisition of a civil licence rarely entered conversation in my time. In part, I suggest, is that the RAF was generally a good place to be! Now, with less mobility/variety, it may be that the new generations want to sit in the same place, doing the same job, forever. It certainly wasn't what I wanted, but I suspect th RAF is heading that way now with just Swanwick for the Area people and fewer airfields to choose from. Perhaps this is the sad future?

4. Promotion, or indeed the prospect of that, can be a major retention driver. I suspect, however, that those opportunities are now much more narrowly drawn than in my day, when we had 5 x gp capt, 30+ wg cdr and 150+ sqn ldr. BUT, with roughly half of the 'shop floor' being SNCO controllers, there is an ongoing demand for JOs to fill what one would call Junior Management posts (e.g. Watch Supervisor, Local Examining Officer and indeed ATCEEB). It was that requirement, and the need for a decent-sized pool of suitable candidates for promotion to sqn ldr, that demanded [in my day] the retention of the officer/SNCO controller ratio despite suggestions that more SNCOs would be cheaper. (IIRC the ratio was 60/40 Officer/SNCO at the time.)

It will be interesting to see the impact of the combining of the former ATC and FC specialisations, and whether cross-pollination works in practice as well as in theory ;)

That sounds right. 2 of the civil controllers were posted to Farnborough as we were expanding staff numbers due to the need for increased opening hours for the new civil business terminal.
Didn't do us much good; one was promptly posted to HQ with a medical problem and the other validated on radar but was unable to make it in the tower so went to the college as an instructor (higher pay scale, better pension prospects)

The classic "Those who can, do: those who can't, teach" :)

A nice tangled web of tarmac at F'boro too, which must be fun when busy.

MPN11 re your post#14

I thought my memory was playing tricks,until I realized that your photo had been printed in reverse,and that the picture is a 'mirror image'.

The guy seated on the left is the Controller,the woman at the edge-lit board must be u/t,being supervised by the ATSA sitting in front of the Trackers position on the right.It was not usual for there to be a dedicated Tracker,one person usually carrying out this task,as well as updating the ELB,unless it was very busy,when up to 16 store-dots could be in use.That is not the case here,as evinced by the lack of writing on the board.

I have tried to post a similar,but later image in the correct sense,but am told that I'm not allowed to do that until I have submitted 10 post,so that will have to wait.Just be aware that the Controller sat at the RH console,that on the left being for the Tracker.

MPN 11re your post#18

Though as you rightly say,we had proper plumbing at ER,right up until Eastern Radar(civil) closed, on 4th March '88, the paper provided in the (gent's at least) lavatories was that horrible shiny stuff.BUT,we civvies discovered that the Commanding Officer's (the W/Cs) W/C,on the ground floor,near his office was supplied with the soft variety made from fluffy puppies, a privilege of rank I suppose.Well worth the longer walk !

ex82watcher ... goodness me, so it is! That will teach me to use other people's photos at face value! I rarely ventured across the ERD ops room to the Civil corner, and they had a slightly different console layout to us Mil chaps!

Here's a picture of a typical Mil console: you can see bank of SSR selectors in the big control box on the right in now the correct orientation, with the 8 big code selector switchboxes on the left!

Chevvron


I thought that only one of our number was posted to Farnborough when ER(civil) closed,and as you say,PB went to the College.Who was the other one ?

Are you sure about that P? Thought it was me.

Judy? (can't remember last name). Maybe she wasn't from Eastern then, maybe it's my memory but she certainly arrived at the same time as PB.
PBs 'failure' was strange. I was on an afternoon duty and when I arrived, she'd had her board, failed and within a couple of hours (it seemed) received a phone call inviting her to the college, no second chance or anything; she was perfectly all right on radar even though it was approach rather than area (we still did a bit of area radar at the time eg autonomous crossings).

I can just make out the joystick situated for the right hand, much better than the rolling balls we had at Farnborough!

MPN11

thanks for that picture,it's much clearer than any others I have seen of the ER consoles.Memory has dimmed a little over almost 30 years,but I recognize the little 'joystick for interrogating the SSR and positioning store-dots,and the associated trigger on the LHS,with the black knob above it to select the beams required-rarely turned to anything but 'rain reject' in our case.

One thing that does puzzle me is the meter? behind the joystick - is that for the 'Height-finder'? - we didn't have those.

Judy? (can't remember last name). Maybe she wasn't from Eastern then, maybe it's my memory but she certainly arrived at the same time as PB.
PBs 'failure' was strange. I was on an afternoon duty and when I arrived, she'd had her board, failed and within a couple of hours (it seemed) received a phone call inviting her to the college, no second chance or anything; she was perfectly all right on radar even though it was approach rather than area (we still did a bit of area radar at the time eg autonomous crossings).

Definitely no Judy in my time - '82 till closure.

I agree about the joystick,far easier to use than the Rolling Ball,which we had at LATCC too.

Proletarian (#48),
Aye, there's the rub ! Your "young controllers" will include a contingent of the feminine variety. Biology trumps everything else - even 'motivation'. I cannot recall a single one of our first four who didn't "vanish in a cloud of orange blossom" before her 5 (?) yr SSC was up.

Stands to reason. You can't stop the sun from shining !

Danny.

Oh, I hated rolling balls too. Took ages to get the cursor from A to B, where the joystick was almost instant!

Ummm ... HELP! I can't remember, but you may be right. There were so many odd bits floating around, that were 2nd nature back then but are now "bits of kit" ;)

You may well be right ... PM incoming, mate!

The highest rank/position achieved by any RAF Air Traffic Controller is that of AVM Chris Elliot who is currently Air Sec. SHE also happens to be a successful wife and mother.

And AVM John Arscott, some years earlier. From a Press Release dated 2001 ...

"John Arscott, who is 53, has had a varied career in aviation and continues the job of Director of Airspace Policy as this responsibility transfers to the CAA following enactment of the Transport Act 2000. He is a serving Air Vice-Marshal but will retire from the Royal Air Force to take up the new post within the CAA."

Nice bloke. Interviewed me for a job in AP6 which I didn't get because it had already been decided on the OBN.

All the way off thread, but here we go;

I have no problem with bosses deciding who gets the job, based on how the lucky applicant behaves. The boss needs to have someone they know can work for them.


More than once I have been shoe horned into a job created just for me. What I really object to is the process, very firmly adhered to in Local Authority, of interviewing and letting applicants think they have a shot, when the decision has been made weeks before. I turned up for an interview and when another applicant saw me come in, he left the room as he knew I was always going to be picked. He was right of course, I had been told before the adverts went out, that it was a job for me.

Another job had over 70 applicants, where 12 of us were interviewed. I actually felt sorry for the people who responded to adverts in the local press. They thought that if they were good enough they would have a chance, and if they were the best, they would get the job.

I got that one, as it had also been created for me, and I've not applied for a job since. I don't think it's fair for anyone, and probably discourages folk from applying.

The HR people say they do it out of fairness, but it's really just a cruel waste of money.

... which was much the way of things within MATO, and to an extent the Branch in general. AOC MATO had enormous clout where senior officer appointments were concerned, as did the Mil side at NATS ... C(G)7, and later DD MR. I was firmly of the view that Barnwood just rubber stamped what they were told, to a certain extent.

If your face didn't fit, or you didn't have a background of CATCS/ATCEEB, it was an uphill struggle ;)

MPN11 (#54),
Really ? Consider the case of an ATCO, who has the temperament for, and succeeds in a low-intensity evironment, but fails on subsequent posting to a high intensity one. Is his/her training amortised ? Financially, perhaps, but ..... (you know yourself how hot it can get - you were at Strubby when it had more movements per day than Heathrow).


Cows getting bigger (#68),
All honour and respect to the lady in question, but: "one swallow does not a summer make". You cannot argue from the particular to the general, can you ?

It would be interesting to analyse the service of all WRAF Controllers who did not transfer to General List, to see how many resigned their SS Commissions on marriage before the end of their active period of service. We had one who waved "Bye-bye" to us before she had even got her Certificate of Competency (but then "particular to general" could be applied to me !)

Danny42C.

Danny42C, I'm going back to the early 80's where we had quaint traditions like WRAFs not carrying weapons (lower salary), mandatory retirement on pregnancy etc. For sure, many of the girls took the opportunity to hand-in their uniform early but at the time the playing field was not level.

I left the RAF a decade back and by then everything was (almost) equal and I did not see queues of girls taking the 'option'. However, I did see lots of girls taking maternity leave and then returning.

Cows getting bigger (#74),

I'm going back to the early '60s .................... :

Tempora mutantur, et mutamur nos in illos, I suppose !

Danny.

I was never particularly siezed by the WRAF issue ... in ATC I worked with female ATCOs from the outset, so I guess I ended up gender-blind. As the years went by, from the inception of us DE a/Plt Offs, the emergence of a female sqn ldr SATCO generated barely a ripple in the crewrooms, AFAIK. The good will move upward and onward, regardless of the shape of the sweater.

As to the 2* incumbents noted above, this is in part (I suggest) a further manifestation of the 'enfranchisement' of GD(Ground) officers back in the late 80s, when ATCOs (and presumably FCs) started moving into posts which were normally filled by GD(Air) on ground tours. This not only saved money (i.e. Flying Pay) but also released them to go and do what they should have been doing. We had ATC people doing Arms Control, Int, NATO Ops, Flylingdales ... by the early 90s the list was quite extensive! From that it clearly became acceptable to have non-brevet people doing some very interesting and serious out-of-specialisation jobs - indeed, I enjoyed a couple of them! I could assemble a list of posts around 1990 if anyone's interested.

A smaller Air Force, with a consequential smaller pool of talent, is inevitably going to allow the highly talented to rise to heights never before ever contemplated ... regardless of Branch or gender.

Danny42C ... the hypothetical move from a low- to high-intensity would have been carefully considered at PMC in the light of current performance reports. They didn't tend to just drop people into appointments where the individual wouldn't cope, but in parallel trying to ensure professional development. If the individual did stumble on a 2nd tour, they wouldn't be evicted - just moved somewhere where their abilities matched the task. We saw this quite frequently at Tengah, from where we provided (on posting within FEAF) staff who could not cope in our environment for the calmer world of Changi and Seletar!

Going back to the origins of this thread wrt the situation at RAF Northolt, I did my first tour there, way back in the early ‘70s.

The straight 08 (for ‘twas the runway designator at that time) approach never appeared to be a problem to Heathrow, especially for ‘airways arrivals’ which were worked by Heathrow as part of their arrival sequence. Heathrow Approach sequenced the Northolt arrival between two of their own, but descended it 1000ft below their sequence to the equivalent of 1500ft QNH as soon as they could. They vectored it onto the 08 final approach track and threw/handed it over to ‘Northolt GCA’ (as we were known to them) at about 8NM final at 1500ft on a then diverging track from the 10L arrivals. They wouldn’t lose a landing slot as they kept their own 10L sequence running with a 3000ft QNH glidepath intercept at 9NM so that 1000ft (plus) vertical separation was always present with the option of descending to 2500ft for ILS glidepath intercept if the need arose until 3NM lateral separation had been achieved.

Non-airways arrivals were vectored downwind – below the Heathrow pattern - at 1500ft QNH by Northolt Director who coordinated with Heathrow Approach who said “follow XYZ”, and you did - to the same effect as described above. Although Northolt didn’t have SSR we had a 'dispensation' to identify tracks on their position report on leaving the holding beacons (BNN, LAM, OCK and BIG) by monitoring 119.2 and 119.5 and correlating primary returns with the position report.

We didn’t have a problem all the time I was there with these procedures (OK, so VU-QLG was always the exception that proved the rule but both Heathrow and Northolt were very judicious in handling that entity!) so I always wondered why the dog-leg approach was introduced; can someone enlighten me as to why this variation was introduced – I’ve always been intrigued?

MPN11 (#76),
And there was little me, thinking they just used a pin (blindfold) ! It's a load off my mind !

Danny.

Of course not. Otherwise your proven skill, personality and deep experience wouldn't have been used as an Instructor at CATCS...

... or were you really too dangerous to be allowed near the front line? :) :)

I doubt all those out-of-Specialisation postings were done with a pin either, albeit that was a couple of decades later.

MPN11 (#79),
It is said that: " 'Em as can, Do. 'Em as can't, Instruct. 'Em as can neither Do nor Instruct go on the Examining Board".

Nuff said ! Danny.