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.