Ask Madden

Yo yo...I'm blogging from dinner break at the academy...I found out today that I'll be working LA arrivals at my facility,which doesn't really mean much to me now,though my instructor whose daughter works there said it's probably a better sector to start in...we ran some pretty tough problems today but it was fun...been watching 24....it's pretty good but the story can get ridiculous at times....how many times can one person get lost in one day???also I'm pretty sure jack bauer hasn't slept yet... That's all for now,gotta get back

yo yo...so last night, like we'll be doing the next 2 weeks, we ran scenarious the whole night. the night goes by so quick now. We get in, meet in the classroom, run a scenario for 45 minutes, come back in the room and chat for 15 min, then go back and run it from the other side(north or south sector)...come back in and chat for 15 more min, then go back and either do the same scenario, go up, go down, watever our instructors feel we should do...me and my partner(rick, a guy my age from long island actually) are doing pretty well...one scenario that was pretty damn hard, especially on the side i was on we did and of course the head muckity muck came and took over for my instructor and was my instructor for it, so i was def a little more nervous...he's very much like mr roth, he's a large statured man, very nice and sweet, but large, and thus commands respect from his underlings without having to try...our instructor said he's a good boss because he doesnt need to get people to respect, they just do...
anyhow, he actually said there were a lot of things i do very well, but i need to work on combining transmissions, he said by doing that i'll cut down the time im on the radio and be better prepared for things that may pop up or people that may call me

also, on the news they showed the parents of the craiglist killer going to the courthouse to visit him, and they arrived in a black LIMO, who is paying for them to go in a black limo???wtf

yo yo...so today was our first day of labs...we started by taking a "pretest" which is where we run a scenario by ourselves and get a computer grading without names, and then at the end of the 2 weeks we take the same one again and they see how the class as a whole improved...
after we got into our groups(in one sector 1 will work the north side and one will work the south side) and worked scenarios for the night, practicing coordinating with the other guy in our sector(for sequencing arrivals, handing off aircraft from our control to theirs, etc), the day goes by SO much quicker when your working traffic, i made some silly mistakes but im getting better...its fun walking around with headsets on, makes me feel cool
expect blog updates later because i'll be in class until late

btw, the people doing the piloting are professional "ghost"pilots, that apparently all facilities have, and they make decent money, and all they do is type commands you give them like a computer game, for anyone needing a job try to get one of those!

yo yo...today we got our OWN headsets! we learned the controls on the actual radar scopes will use and ran some problems on there with a personal instructor plugged in with us to critique/help. It was very fun, i really enjoyed it. I did pretty well. Me and another girl in my class talked to the class upstairs thats where we were 2 weeks ago(there were some people there going to the facilities we are) so it was cool cuz it made us feel bad ass and important. Our class is moving to nights tommorrow, meaning class is now 3:30pm-12:00am. Thats cool for today cuz now i get super extra time, and now i'll be able to sleep longer.

yo yo...so today we finished academics officially. We ran problems and i felt a lot better. Apparently the instructors like our class the best, most were hanging out in our class today, the class next door apparently has know it alls so they dont like them. Our main instructor said our class has a good reputation.
After work i tried to get an OKlahoma ID card, but i'd have to surrender my new york license to do so, so f that. thats pretty much all.

yo yo...today we were finishing up academics and ran a problem at the end of class and i actually did pretty well and the instructor told me so, that made me felt good.
As per karen's request i'll breifly discuss roommates
I have 2 housemates, and they are both new, both moved in the last week. One was on nights(classes are either 7-3:30 or 3:30-12, can alternate week to week, depends on class) so i didnt see much. One is married, late 20's, nice, too nice(always says sorry to bother you when he asks me something), he went home this weekend to kansas city cuz his wife wanted him to, his accent is kinda weird
Other roommate is Emery, 24ish, was in army for several years, just came out recently, was a controller there. Plays games a lot, into comics, stuff like that. There are a lot of people we all call "roommates" but dont actually live in our house. The woman we all rent from has 11 houses she rents, and we all hang at the main house, but some kids dont hang, its usually the same group that hangs at the main house.

Oh, and on the gossip side, some kid just quit. Apparently he was here for Enroute(meaning he would be working at a center) and just started labs, first problem he had 10 planes on his scope, freaked out and said he cant do this and quit. He's gone now. wat a queer.
I actually really like running problems, its really fun and neat. You look at speeds headings altitudes and different rates of each and project where everything will be, its kinda like chess but i really like it.
Today our class took a trip to this restaurant about 25 min outside of the city called Eishens, which only sells fried chicken and fried okra but its apparently very good. There were no plates, just wax paper, and it was mad cheap.

OH, and the COOLEST thing of all today
on the way to the place i was talking to a couple of people in my class who were air force controllers in southern Nevada, and one of them frequently controlled the plane taht would shuttle workers into area 51. She said it had clearance to a certain point, then would dissappear, and it had the callsign Janet, so they all knew which one it was.

yo yo...so today we did approach procedures the whole day. went kinda slow. at the end of the day we ran a problem of just approaches and it was annoying because there was a different girl than usual piloting for me and she was very slow with the commands, so when it got busy i was spitting of commands and she was late on them, then she messed up with my approach clearances so planes were going places they werent supposed, very annoying, but i made it work.
Its kinda funny that when we learned about speed adjustments they talked about the speed limit,(theres a 250knot speed limit under 10000 ft). Its just funny to hear them say speed limit.

yo yo...i feel like caca, bad allergies. went to the civil aeronautics medical institute today(free doctor) and got some drugs. thats only really eventful thing today. Today we learned methods of speed control and altitude assignments and vectoring.

EDIT

we had a cool discussion with a few of the instructors who were working during 9/11, it was pretty interesting...every plane in US airspace had to land at the nearest airport no matter where they were going or what airport was nearest...and they werent allowed to tell the pilots why, they had to tell them to contact their airline

Governor Rick Perry of Texas has indicated that it is a possibility that his state might secede from the union. He and the other fine people of Texas just can't stand these damn black people, I mean taxes anymore! Chuck Norris has indicated that he'd be willing to be President of the newly formed country that will be Texas. Now, last time I looked into it, talk of a state seceding from the union was treason. And treason was federally punishable by the death penalty (which they just LOOOOOVE in Texas). So, it stands to logic, that I officially move for Rick Perry and Chuck Norris to be tried and executed for treason. It only seems fair. And I prefer one of those more barbaric death penalties, like firing squad or hanging. None of this pussy lethal injection.

Also, yesterday on CNN, in an interview with one of those dumb "teabaggers" (heh heh...) she referred to Obama as a "fascist and a socialist". Now, I find this absolutely remarkable since it's an ideological impossibility. Therefore, I can only conclude that Barack Obama must be god. Also, really, what are these teabaggers complaining about. I paid fewer taxes this year than I did last year, as did my mother and grandmother. w00t!

what up. i made a tumblr, probably a bad choice. like i need more distractions. i've also been tweeting, nici paggs is particularly delightful in her twitterants. and bincent.

glad to see adam is making serious headway, proud of you buddy.

going to cornell this weekend with mass transit, presumably to end college the same way i started looking at them.

yo yo...monday we graduated from Intro to Terminal Radar to Radar Training. We learning similar things but more in depth. End of next week are classes will consist solely if running scenarious on simulators. WE did a practice problem today and i think i did pretty well, my partner is very cool, she is former air force so she's pretty experienced and she helps me out a lot and even if we doing basic things she'll throw little twists in there just to test me.
One instructor was telling us a whole bunch of stories about this rebel controller. He told us how someone called the tower complaining about noise from the planes and he just slammed his mic against the trash can over and over and said "THATS noise!" He told us various stories that involved him being severely intoxicated. He also told us how he was going on his second honeymoon, but his flight coudlnt depart because of an ATC restriction in place. His fellow controllers knowing this called the pilot of his plane and said if he'd take off in 5 minutes they'd let him go. Meanwhile the rebel controller, thinking his plane wasnt gonna take off, was up in the tower hanging out. The controllers there told him to get his ass down there but the plane just started to taxi. The rebel controller then told the person at the gate that with one call he'll make sure no planes take off for 2 hrs. They let him on, and all got in trouble.
So after hearing tons of stories we asked what happend to him. Our instructor quickly and matter-of-factly said "oh he was fired."
I don't understand how you can't track how ransoms paid to pirates get to them. For instance, that time they parachuted the money to them on a boat, are you telling me there's NO way you can literally follow the money??? cmon.
Also on that note, kinda, i don't get how osama bin laden can broadcast these messages and there's no way to track it. Like when they go through al jazeera there has to be SOME way of tracing it back to a source.
My allergies are acting majorly, sucks. im gonna go to the health center on campus tommorrow and get a goodie bag of drugs.

yo yo...i'm very tired. I slept till 1 sunday and thus i couldn't fall asleep last night. TOday we started Radar Training so now we gettin into the meats and potatoes. Today we did lessons on primary and seconday radar, and worked on piloting controls for the simulator programs
We had an easter party on sunday and we painted eggs and played rock band and played ping pong and Kim's daughter's boyfriends' great dane puppy came and he was so skinny but super cute.
We had an interesting converstaion today with the instructors about pass/fail. As of now the Tower and En Route classes are pass/fail for the final evalauation, whereas the TRACON(wat im in) is pass/pass. The teachers say they don't like the pass fail because everyone has to be treated the same, so they aren't allowed to talk to kids outside of class about anything related unless the whole class is present, and it prevents learning. The really super inspiring instructor that everyone loves was talking to our class during break and said that if it goes back to pass/fail he's quitting, but he also was planning on going back into the field semi soon anyways.

yo yo...so we finished our lesson plans for our into to terminal radar, monday we start radar training, so its gonna get into high gear. Yesterday we observed the class 3 weeks ahead of us as they started using radars with their instructors helping. it was pretty cool and im excited. Today we played a game where we had to seperate planes on a maze only using 3 altitudes, it passed time and was fun
One thing i REALLY like about the academy hear are the instructors. They are all former controllers, all of them have different work experience, some became supervisors, others stayed in one center, some jumped all over. They all have different stories and all love to answer questions. I always hated in high school and college when your teacher went to school to teach, and then taught. I hated when they had no real world experience to share with us.
Oh, and to answer vincents question better that he asked about using delta, it actually isn't a problem. When calling an air carrier(airline) they each have a special identifier, and then you use the numbers after, such as AAL512(American 512), and Delta is DAL, so a delta flight would look like DAL8924. (why it's not DEL idk)
Also i learned there is def money to be made designing software for the FAA. We learned about some protocol with distributing weather reports today, and i asked if any facilities have an automated process for it, and he said i'll be dissapointed if i expect the FAA to have current technology. It really isn't even all that advanced. Because a report will come in with conditions for certain areas, and someones job is to see if that is within 150 miles if their sector, and if so distribute it. You would think software could automatically determine if its in whatever parameters you wanted and distribute automatically.
On another personalized note, Nico, i think you would love ATC. You'd like the vectoring and such.

Change we can believe in... oh, nevermind...

yo yo...so today we just did a few things to finish up our "block 2" lesson plan and took the test on it, u gotta get a 70 to pass, but they say its madd easy and most get 95 or over, i got 100.
Last nite i went to a NATCA(atc union) meeting. I especially wanted to go cuz i heard someone from my facility was gonna be there. They talked about basic union stuff, but this was important in particular because of the labor disputes going on with atcers and FAA. Based on evidence they gave it seems very very likely we will be going back to our old contracts soon(we are under imposed work rules now) which means better dress code, pay raises(pay was cut 30% in 2006) and better leave rules and such.
THe guy from my facility gave a little presentation. He is a rep for my facility and he was only in the Academy 12 months ago, tho has a lot of military experience. He pointed me out during his speech and said he needs to talk to me after(cuz i goin to his facility). I asked after how he knew i was and he said someone told him to look for the guy with green hair. He was REAL cool and made me feel a lot better. He's from SD too so we talked about different areas and how far away they are, which i feel better about now also. He gave me some training materials that i will get there so i can get a jump start and told me he'd email me and tell me what sector im gonna work(southern cal tracon was consolidated some years ago, actually fairly recently so its a 'super tracon' and has 6 sectors, and when you assigned yours thats yours forever).
All in all things are goin pretty good now. Apparently here in Oklahoma there is a competitive dodgeball place that has pickup games friday and saturday nites. This crazy instreuctor thats from OK tells us stuff about OK and she's the wierdest person ever. She uses all sorts of crazy expressions, talks a lot, is very blunt, i actually didnt like her at first but now i like her. She's also very good at explaining things. She always tells us about weird places in the area, like this chicken place 30 min away that only sells whole chickens and fried okra, and there are no plates, just wax paper. and its in a town with no stop signs or stop lights.
gonna eat some rice now

yo yo...so start of second week. first weekend wasnt that interesting, we played rock band friday night, saturday we went to a club where its like a club but theres a giant bull riding ring, where a few times during the night real people ride real bulls. they are massive. one guy got knocked unconscious. i may want to give it a shot before i leave and die. its weird too cuz in the course of 3 hours they played MAYBE 5 hip hop songs. mostly country, and mad people dance to it, apparently something called a "two step"
today we went into strip marking(which is an annoying process of putting all the info for a planes flight onto a strip of paper, tho many current facilities have it computerized). we also learned how to read data blocks(on radar its the block of info about a plane next to the little blip). we also talked to the class before us, well a few people, cuz 3 people from that class are going to my facility. one girl from that class worked at my facility(not as a controller). she told us how the training process there has gotten a lot better and a lot more organized and and said that we'll be going to work so early during training that traffic wont be an issue anywhere. It made me feel a little more at ease.
Also apparently for the TRACON people(kind of facility i'm going to) there is no pass fail for our final test in the academy, we all move on no matter what. thats also a little less nerve racking. I'm going to a NATCA(controller union) meeting later cuz the rep from my facility will be there.

yo yo...day 4, end of first week(we started on tuesday). I'm liking it more and more. I'm understanding things better, we're still doing basic stuff but our instructors have been showing us things that are more advanced so it will be easier when we do it in radar training in a couple of weeks. I'm learning the phreaseology pretty well. Today we also played with simulators where one of us controlled planes as pilots and the other was the controller and gave them headings to go through a little airspace maze. We really were only supposed to do it to learn how to input controls as the pilot, but we did extra stuff with it and it was fun.
One of our instructors was just so damn cool and inspired my life. He's lived in like a million different states, and talked about how he loves the job so much and how there's so many opportunities and its always interesting and never the same and it really made us all excited. He was a really good teacher.
Also in phraseology when one controller calls another controller at a different facility at the end of the message he has to say his initials, either as initials (A Y) or in ICAO phonetics. Mine is really awesome (Alpha Yankee). Our main instructor told us that in most facilitiyes if you have the same initials as someone they usually make you use different ones, and you can't use F U if those are ur initials. I'm pretty sure no one will have mine. Also its weird, well not weird but funny, that people that live in OK are concerned about tornadoes, seems so weird...like really concerned.

yo yo...so today was class day number 3. Getting more interesting . Today we were still in basics and we covered keyboarding(using a special keyboard, practicing typing in beacon codes for planes and using the phonetic alphabet(alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, etc, i'm actually pretty good at that)...we also did some lessons on air spaces and restricted areas and practiced a little phraseology. In ATC everything you say has to be said a certain way.
I really like what i'm doing. I like having a job that means something and is respect worthy. I highly suggest it to anyone who doesn't have a direction in life. Availability, security, room for advancement and transferring.
Afterwards i hung out at the main house and played with a parrot. The parrot likes to clean your teeth if you open your mouth, and he got rough and bit my gun.
I also went to the local pawn shop(basically gun store) and held some gats ive been looking at. I'll prolly rent those from the range. I think i decided on 9mm, because i won't be carrying for a little while, so i won't need the stopping power of a .40 or .45 yet. And for target shooting 9mm will be much cheaper cuz the ammo is far cheaper.
Waking up hasn't been that bad. Ive been using two alarms cuz i'm very afraid of being late. Not like running late, but the kind of late where you wake up and its like noon.
One of our instructors said today he actually controlled the f-16's that scrambled to the hijacked plane that crashed in PA on 9/11. Thats pretty neat i thought.

yo yo...so today was pretty slow as well. i woke up and was more tired than yesterday. I'll get used to it, plus i went to bed later than i'd like. I decided to make egg salad for lunch today so that took a while.
Anyhow today we just did basic stuff like the components of the air traffic system, what different facilities do, etc. The first 9 class days are the basics class, basically a condensed version of the 5 week BASICS class. Then we have i think 10 or 12 days of radar training. We started to get off topic today because we were asking questions and theres several people in my class(12 person class) who have experience, 5 were in air force. So i'm definitely behind in that category. It will definitely be hard, but as long as i work hard i know i'll succeed.
We also got news of an unsuspected pay raise today. Normally during your whole stint in OKC you get paid a training salary, and then when you go to your facility you get bumped to regular starting pay. We learned today that after the basics, so after the first pay period we will get bumped up! Yay! now i can get a gun!
I became friends with the boy next to me. He's a black man (see karen i have black friends!) that was in the air force. He's been all over and was a crew chief for an f-16 and he's into working out too, we actually went to the gym together. I really do wish i went to the air force out of high school.
Its an interesting situation in the class. You meet and talk to people and everyone is going all over the country in a few weeks. Its weird. Theres a couple kids going to NY, a couple to northern Cal, another woman going to So Cal, a girl going to Louisiana i think, a girl that im friendly with that going to Detroit, Don(my black friend) is going to edwards air force base(theres an FAA facility on the base).
Also im excited because there was a meet and greet with people from diff facilities today, and they were telling me that you are allowed 64 hours(work hours, so 8 days) of change of location leave. On our packet it says you have one business day to report to your facility, which is scary. So now we know you just call up and request the time. Plus you don't have to use it all, you can use the rest for up to 2 years for moving related stuff, like if you having furniture delivered or whatknot.
We had a presentation from these 2 muckitymucks from the ATO(air traffic organization, its a sub thing of the FAA). One guy had a really impressive resume, but seemed to be a braggart. He started as an offt he street controller, was assiatant director at this facility, head director at this facility, went to iraq and developed their air traffic system. Was the first controller there. Was on all these different councils. He has top secret classification. He worked in NORAD(super secret gov't defense base in the mountains of colorado).
Went to gym straight from work and hung at main house for a little. Now here. Im getting used to being up for more than 12 hours. Its like highschool.
Notes

-Its very windy here
-I actually like it here
-there's no helmet laws here and a lot of people ride motorcycles w/o them. Its so stupid
-Glock or Springfield?
- im totally the most fancy dresser at the academy