OB424: The Lowdown on the Up-Down

We're not here to sugarcoat anything. We're not here, I'm not a recruiter for air traffic. The point of the show was always to give it to you real, to give it to you, honest, the real thing, not, oh, everyone loves it, it's gonna be so great. Come in, come and do this job, it's for everyone. It's amazing. There are parts of it like that, but there are parts of it that are hard. Ready. Welcome to Opposing Bases Air Traffic Talk, an aviation podcast by two air traffic controllers and rated pilots who love to talk about flying, controlling and everything in between. The show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for your instructor, your supervisor, the FAA, the NTSB or your CAT. The show will give you a better understanding of how things work in the national airspace system and maybe even make you laugh along the way. Please welcome retired Army pilot Alpha Golf and first officer at Penguin Airlines, Romeo Hotel. It's Wednesday, February 11th, 2026, episode 424. On today's show, we'll talk about the day and the life of a controller, correct another incorrect statement made by me and solve all of the world's problems. What's up, BG? Hello, hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Yes. 424. 424. 424 episodes. We didn't record last week. We recorded two the week prior. I believe it was before the snow apocalypse that we experienced. Where are we at with that? Give everybody an update on our snow situation here. Right, so here at my residence, we had upwards of 12 inches of snow. That's very unusual here. Now, the one good thing about this storm was that it was very cold and the snow was very dry. And fluffy, so it lost probably four inches, you know, the next day. And very quickly started melting off. It was super easy to shovel, you know. It was easy to drive through. It wasn't, you know, a big wet snow is way worse for driving. But anyway, we're at the point of nearly gone. Except for the big piles, you know, on the street and in your driveway, it's pretty much gone. Did you lose power? Because yesterday was 65, 68 degrees. Very nice. It was gorgeous. Did you lose power? Nope, never lost power. Neither did we, which means that you're prepared for it. You won't lose it. Right, that's how it goes. Right. Yeah, we're on the same boat. We didn't get as much as you and we're only like what, 20 miles from you? It was a big difference. And another 20 miles west, they didn't get anything. 20 or 30 miles west, they didn't get anything. So we're in this kind of weird dip of polar air and moisture. I'm glad it's done. I'm done with it. I'm ready to be in the spring. I've had it, I like the 60 degree temperature. Man, I went on walks yesterday on my breaks, just to be out. It was so nice. That was so nice, yeah. What else? I am back from a training event in Penguin land. It was warmer there when I got off the plane than it is here. That's all done. I took an awesome video of anti-icing on the airplane, the green gooey stuff that I've recently spoke about. And none of you really thought that was amazing. I took a big, I cried about that in my sleep. That we didn't remark about cinematic value of that. Educational content I was providing you. You know, now in this context that you've provided, I'll have to go back and watch it. It's a whole minute. It was riveting. I had an awesome seat. I could see the green stuff like flow off of the plane. How often are you sitting next to the wing where you could see it happening? We're gonna talk about a little bit of my anti-ice comments later on today's show, but anyway, I got to see it live. So, and I didn't have to do the walk around on that airplane, so I didn't care if it was gooey and disgusting. Right. Oh, they opened all the runways. Oh yeah, that's a big news. Yesterday, fine. Grab noise. Yesterday was the first day. The two, three, right, and one, four. We've said this before. Four, our main snow fighting capability is with the sun here. Despite the ability to do it. They have the trucks, they could have done it. They could have done it. Post event, right? Yes. Once that ice layer was gone, they could have gone in there and done that, but they decided not to. And make your lives more difficult for a few days. So, yesterday, before it opened, we asked an ops vehicle on frequency, like what's the deal? It looks dry from here. And they said, oh no, on all the white paint, on the numbers, on the landing bars, you know, all of those places are still ice because they're white and they don't get warm. Oh, okay. So, like two guys with a shovel, you know, taking turns could have this done in afternoon. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, it's not part of the plan. But we denied services because of one runway for, especially yesterday, because it got so busy yesterday, everybody was out flying. Oh my gosh, we're behind. We haven't flown in two weeks. We all have to go out right now. And in the middle of that, we had P-8s come in and want practice approaches and we just had to say no. Unable, okay. Well, it's fair, especially if you're down to one surface in the crossing runway, which was needed a couple of days ago, which is also closed, the wind was really, really bad. I thought it was gonna delay me leaving that day. It was really gusty when we left. Yes, it was, like over 40. Speaking of 40 mile an hour winds, when it's 11 outside and it feels like temperatures, like minus 12 and you're the bunkie. Yeah, you still have to do the walk around. Yeah, and I was thinking about that. Just beat them willies down. Not only are you having to be the bunkie and not getting stick time, right? They're gonna make you do the pre-flight. Yeah, that's fun. That's wrong. So I got down the stairs, I turned the corner and I was aimed right into the wind and it hit my face and I said. So I put my glove over my face, it hurt. Yeah, yeah. It was very windy and very cold. Man, hopefully that's- Our policy, the army, if you were flying this thing, the crew, the flying crew, pre-flights, not the jump-seater, not a passenger in the back. Uh-uh. No, no, no, no, no. If you're getting the flight time, you are pre-flighting. When I introduced myself to the crew, I shook their hand and said, how much do I have to pay you to do the walk around? And they said, there's not enough money. Enjoy. So shall we begin? Let us begin. All right. Since OB-423, we have a few new members on the iceberg. Kilo Zulu, Alpha Fox, Charlie Golfs here, Mike, Juliet Oscar, Juliet Bravo, Delta Bravo, Golf Papa, and Delta Alpha, our new supporters. Thank you. We got PayPal drops from Alpha Mike, Lima Bravo, and Golf Mike. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to learn more about supporting the show. Check out opposingbasis.supercast.com. Our subscribers get on time episodes, no delays, our back catalog, access to our live stream, bonus audio, and a direct line to us through our supporter only email. You'll keep the show ad-free and community supported. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. All in, all shall be quesiton. It's a story. It's a story. Whoa. Radio and announcements. Review and announcements. We have a lot of announcements. I'm gonna get ready while you read the review and prepare to read all these amazing announcements. Very good. The review titled, Learn How to Impersonate a Federal Employee the Slow Way. That is, you have my attention. All right. Five stars. At my Glider Club on a recent bad weather day, Hangar Talk ensued. The topic was our Glider Ops separation from an arrival into the nearby hipster, Charlie. I, an instrument rated airplane and Glider private pilot, was doing my best to represent the opposing basis ethos of good nasty citizenship to a group of Glider pilots, most of whose idea of instrument procedures is fuzzy at best and involves a cell phone with Google Maps at worst, beyond walking them through the routes and altitude restrictions on the star. I filled in extra detail, gleaned from this podcast about what the controllers are expecting as center hands off arrivals to approach and approach launchers, departures, out of their problem at high speed. We covered IFR separation requirements, the limits of radar coverage, the differences between our Gliders primary only returns, mode C, ADS-B, and even got into a rival and departure gates around nearby Mount Headwear. It was a great discussion. And as it wound down, and we agreed that transponders should be next on the club's upgrade wish list, our tow pilot, a retired Air Force General and airline pilot came up and asked, so are you a controller? No, sir, I just listened to a podcast. Alpha Charlie Foxtrot, love it. Excellent. Great job. The hanger talk on a low IFR day, you learn a lot from those conversations, so good for you guys. And thanks for sharing the show. Yes. All right, announcements. Hi guys, number one, I have an announcement for Echo Delta, congratulations for earning your new citation 521, type rating in January, congrats. 525. 525, did I say nine? One. Oh. Of special note, he successfully navigated the universal after years of flying modern Garmin GA glass instruments for the uninitiated, the universal FMS is the equivalent of an aviation advocates with the usability of a spoiled garden of milk. Congratulations, Echo Delta. Also, the OB hoodie is great, five stars, cheers, Julie Delta, well, cool. Had you heard this term universal before? For describing the FMS? I hadn't, but probably one that's common in multiple airplanes, maybe this is a generic name you've made up or maybe that is what it's called. When you are used to some of, like, GA gets all the new toys much faster than jets that have been around for, you know, not even that long, 10 or 15 years, it's a big time span. And they don't go back and retrofit a lot of these jets. It's what came with that airplane. So you're doing like a little step back in time. And to navigate those is tricky. Ask me how I know. I'm working on one that was invented in the 80s. Oh boy. Yeah. Speaking of upgrades, that I, I can't remember on the last show, I made a trip down to the unit, the King Air unit for a retirement ceremony for the last person I think that I knew left in that unit. Reserve fixed wing has been on the chopping block forever for like five years they've been saying, oh, we're getting rid of it, we're getting rid of it. It doesn't serve, it doesn't have a tactical purpose, you know, well, so I've been gone a couple of years, I come back, what have they done? Upgraded all the planes. I have never seen a King Air with five bladed props. Five. Nice. Someone, I'm sure they're out there in the civilian world, but it seems kind of rare. Anyway, and they put all new Garmin 1000, autothrottles, autothrottles on a King Air. Fancy. Yeah, so not only did they not get rid of reserve fixed wing, they doubled down. Made it better. Yeah. I'm sure the pilots love that. Yeah. Autothrottles a game changer, I didn't have that thought I went to Penguin. That is a game changer. If you're used to manipulating the thrust levers, the entire flight, and all of a sudden you don't have to do that anymore? Yeah. It's amazing. Now just use caution that can lull you into a sense of forgetting to put the power back in. Yes, it can. At the bottom of a descent when you don't have autothrottles anymore. Yeah. That, luckily I have not flown with that to Frol yet. I don't look forward to that day. Don't let the stallhorn be your reminder. Why are we slowing down? So quiet. It's so weird. All right, number two, Alpha Mike is a commercially rated helicopter pilot. Congrats. Awesome, congrats. Their feedback is below. We'll get to that. Number three, Juliet Mike is now a captain. Congrats. Very good. They sent a note. I recently passed my captain upgrade training at the executive fractional under the Buckeye Charlie and the Phenom 300. That's a four to six passenger business jet. If you've never heard of that. This is my first time being a captain in a crew environment. I'm excited and a bit apprehensive, but I'm looking forward to running my own ship. Juliet Mike from the Western Slope Delta. Well, congrats. Cool. And good luck. Now all the things you've learned about what you wanted to do as a captain and what you thought, I might do that a little bit differently. You might change your opinion. Now you're the one in charge of actually executing some of those things that you thought, why don't they do this? Well, now you're in that seat and you're gonna learn a lot. We're gonna learn a lot. It changes everything. Yeah. But I'm sure you'll do great. You've spent a few years over in the right seat. On that airplane, I believe, we've gotten feedback about you on that plane before. So that's good. You have the familiarity of the airplane under your belt and now it's the operational stuff. Every day you're gonna see new stuff. Why did this never happen when I was in the right seat? Yeah, right, right. It did, you just didn't notice. All right, and the last one, hi, Arach and A.G. This is Supercaster Lou Impravo from the Trappist beer Delta, west of the Mussels and Freets, Charlie in beautiful Belgium. Hmm. Happy to report that after 11 months of ground school, some time in a basic air traffic, BATD, I can't remember what that stands for. Basic air training device, airplane training device, I think is what it is. And about 40 hours of flying in and out of the soup, I obtained my IASA, Basic Instrument Rating. Congrats. Cool, awesome. So we're talking about another country. There's feedback below. We're gonna read about that too. So, okay. All right, moving on. Yeah. Yeah. Time to feedback. Time to feedback. I'm exhausted. You have to get number one. Number one from Supercaster, Turner Alpo-Michael, kind, Prioters of the NAS, caretakers of the ironically flightless avian metaphors of aviation knowledge, penguins for the uninitiated, and commanders of machines capable of launching humans into various levels of the atmosphere. It is with excitement and relief that I share the news that I am as of this writing, the world's newest and okayest commercial helicopter pilot. Congrats. Congrats again. Yes, I passed my check write. It's been quite the journey and it was, and it has taught me a great many things. I thought I might quickly share a few of the lessons making the transition from airplanes to helicopters, what the transition has taught me from airplanes to helicopters. First, when your 18,000 hour helicopter CFI, whoa, whoa. That is not something to brush over. No, you're not going on seven, eight hour transatlantic flights in a helicopter. So, if you got that much time in a helicopter, you spent the better part of your entire adult life in that seat. Yes, and to have somebody that's a CFI have that much experience worth their weight in gold. Wow. Okay, let's start over. First, when your 18,000 hour helicopter CFI says, my controls, let me show you something. Tighten up that seatbelt a little bit because you can rest assured you're about to experience something you won't find in any level of the Airmen certification standards in hindsight, doing return to target maneuvers on my various first lesson probably should have been a clue about what was to come. Return to target, nice. Second, while you may be able to accurately and gently touch the Robinson air beater down in that little 12 by eight box, that is the center of the R, just beyond the threshold of runway 25 right, your feeble pilot skills are still no match for the helicopter repellent force field that surrounds the 12 by 12 car you need to return the aircraft to at the end of your flight. Yeah, so aircraft without wheels frequently have to land on a pad with wheels. A dolly. A dolly, it's not very big. Like a 12 by 12. A furniture dolly? Yeah, a larger furniture dolly basically. Yeah, so yeah, it's not very big. Third and finally, there's nothing quite as befuddling as trying to maintain a stationary hover on the ramp with a 20 not left crosswind wreaking havoc on the aerodynamics of your tail rotor. A five year old experience a sudden case of urinary urgency would have an easier time holding still in one spot. Of course, there were many other lessons learned but alas, more than I can recount here. For now, I'm quite thankful for the amazing OB community and you, our fine host for all the support and encouragement that includes, that continues to push me to learn, experience and achieve so many new things. Thankfully yours, rotor head, Alpha Mike. PS, quick correction to a comment R.H. made on 423. I am actually a private and instrument rated airplane pilot. Although getting my commercial airplane add on rating is probably the next step in my journey. Okay, cool. Well, awesome. Congrats. Yeah. There is a way to fix the aerodynamic problems of your tail rotor and that is by flying a helicopter without one. The fly should not. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's awesome. Very good. What are the odds that this 18,000 hour pilot was part of some military deployment somewhere in the last 50 years? Pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, it's not unheard of, but I think when you find somebody like this that has this many hours, it's most likely military time. Now, I know we have a listener out West that's a helicopter guy, civilian, has been civilian helicopter guys entire career and has a lot of hours without any, well, I guess technically maybe he has some deployments. Okay. But anyway, yeah, it's not super common. I don't think. 18,000 hours fixed wing is a lot of time. Helicopters just blows my mind. That's a lot of experience. Yeah, I think my average flight was like an hour and some change, a 1.2, 1.5. Now overseas, you're getting some longer ones, but it's rare that you're doing something over four in a shot. So the amount of iterations that you've gone through, the run-ups, the shutdowns, just everything. Thousands. Yes. Yeah. All right, I get number two. Congratulations to help Mike. Thank you for sharing the stories. Number two from Supercaster November, Tango, Hi, AGNR Age, Penguin Explorer, November, Tango here. I'm a midlife working on career 2.0 and started listening to a show in April of 25. I started from episode one and I refused to go out of order. Good for you. Your show has helped my confidence talking to ATC, which I believe played a part in helping pass my instrument check ride last year. Congrats. I'm happy to announce I recently passed my commercial airplane single engine land check ride and have started CFI initial training. All right, congrats again. I'm currently on episode 378 and I found that 1.8 speed to be perfect to listen to your show as I work to get caught up. Not 2.0, but not 1.5. 1.8. Good for you. When you catch up to live shows, you're just, you're probably going to give up. I think you have to watch this in the live stream and this is it. This is how we talk. This is the way. Change you forever in a negative way. Yeah, there's no recovery. It was good having you. Glad you listened. Just stop now. Let's see. Perfect to get caught up. I plan to listen at 1x speed when I get caught up so that I can start mentally training for when I get to see you guys live at Oshkosh, hopefully, in the next year or two. Thank you for putting out such a great informational and entertaining podcast, November tango from the Gator state. Gatekeeper Executive Airport next to Gatekeeper International. OK, cool. Very good. Thanks for sharing the story. Fancy jet music. All right, this week's show topic is brought to us by Penguinot Delta Sierra from Aquaville, municipal, a day in the life of a controller. I've been wondering. They sent a nice note and we got a lot of questions. I put some blue in here. Maybe review that while I'm talking. So we go, I don't know. That's just a reminder down there of all the things. I've been wondering, what does a typical day look like for air traffic? Say you're working. Oh, I have to do this too. Little editorial note. You wrote this and either your speech to text turned every time you said the word session, it changed it to season. I changed them back to session. If I mumbled season when I talked about a session in a tower or a position, that's my fault. But I changed all the times you said season to session. And what's a typical day like? You're working from six 30 to three. That's not a shift. We'll talk about that. What time do you roll in the parking lot? What are your pre-shift rituals? I imagine coffee is involved. How many sessions do you work per day? Do you know how long each session will be? What if you've had too much coffee and you got to go during a session? How long are breaks between sessions? What do you do on those breaks? Is a lunch a longer break than other breaks? And lastly, how do you decompress after you drive home? We've discussed some of this before, but we haven't put it together in a full day. A life of an air traffic controller, blue skies, unless you need IFR currency, Delta Sierra. I think this will be fun. We haven't done this. We probably haven't talked about it all once in a long time about how day goes. And maybe on the next episode, we'll do a day in the life of a pilot slash bunkie. And kind of go through that, how the day goes. I like it. All right, let's start with some basic shifts. Forget that you're on this weird 10 hour thing. Just an eight hour world. We work at a 24 hour facility at Triad. Walk us through some basic shifts. What they look like on paper. Okay, so there's a six. Well, now we have a 530 to 130. Okay. There is a six to two. There's almost like everything. A seven to three and eight to four. Now, not all of these are used every day. It just sort of depends where you need the coverage. An 11 to seven, a one to nine, a three to 11, and then the mid. 1030 to 630 generally. It's different this year, but we won't get into that. I think we mentioned before that they change some rules that require more time in between a day or a night and a mid shift. And so we've had to kind of mix stuff up a little bit. But anyway, there's basically those shifts. Your core shifts, the ones that are super important are where a big shift changes happening. So the mid people get off at 630 in the morning. That six o'clock shift is a core shift. You have to be there to get the mid people out, right? Everything else kind of is filler, the seven, the eight. Another one is the one o'clock, because now your six o'clock people are getting done at two and you want these people to come in at one. It used to be 130, but they do one to give those people kind of a half an hour to get briefings done. Anything that has to be done, face-to-face briefings. And so that's kind of a core shift. And then the three to 11 is a core shift where they're up against, they're the ones touching up against the mid. So the mid is sort of what drives the train and everything else sort of revolves around that. So shifts that touch the mid and then the shifts that touch those are sort of your core. These have to be here shifts. And during the day, the middle, those middle filler shifts that don't touch the mid, they're there in between those, getting in the end of the mid. Those are more traffic oriented in terms of how many people butts in seats we need in each room to run the operation and offer the services that we need to at that time of day. So probably not unlike a lot of facilities, try it as busiest, I'm gonna say this with a qualifier, on average, busiest between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. And you'll probably have the most amount of people in the building at those times. Maybe a little bit earlier in the day where that starts to wane off into less people, but there is a part of the day where morning shift and afternoon shift, or we call them Eve shifts, are overlapping quite a bit. And that's to have the ability to put more, open more positions when you have traffic. So the beginning, go ahead. And to accomplish training. Yes. So if you only had your core shift, people and your eights, you know, your sevens, your eights, your 11s didn't show up, no training would happen. Right. You wouldn't have the people to train. Yeah, you already talked about number two, sort of the overlap. This is just triad. We're not super unusual on the times that we just said, but you kind of hit the nail on the head. It's driven on the fact that we are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I don't know why there's locks in the doors. It never closes. Some facilities don't have that midnight shift, so their shifts look a lot different, especially in the evening ones, where there might only be one or two people in the building to close it and to give the airspace to another overlying facility. But at a 24 hour facility, your problem starts and ends with the mid and you have to have a solution to get around that. Yes. The mid really is what throws a wrench in everything. You can drastically reduce the amount of people you need in a building and the amount of overtime you're spending by not having the mid. Amen. All right, third one here. We have two places to work. In general, there are three different types of facilities. There's standalone towers and standalone tracons in the bigger places where there's no tower or radar, the opposite, it's just one room to staff. Triad has an up-down, we have a tower and radar and we're certified in both radar and tower. When you get certified in the building, you can do everything. And then there's centers and obviously they don't have a tower associated with a center. So I would look at them sort of like a one room building. It's, those are divided up into areas but you're certified in an area with maybe have five or 10 positions in it but the dynamics of an up-down facility are a little more complicated. Regardless of the fact that there's less humans in the building, it's still a little bit more of a difficult staffing solution when you have to account for all of those positions in two different places during those busier times of the day. Yeah, yeah. So you get to work. How do you know where you're supposed to go? What's the first thing you do when you get there? Okay, so let's say I'm on a six o'clock shift. Now, as far as the question about what is on time, to me this really depends on what your shift is. If someone in the building, if you're getting to work, is someone being relieved and going home, your timeliness is very important to me. So if you're on a six and the midperson has been up in the tower for three and a half hours, they're ready to go. You are there break. Seconds matter, not minutes. Seconds matter. Right, so I like to be able to be in the tower a little before six, 58, 59. It's just mentally, so it's, because I know what it's like to be that person. You can't wait to hear the door open. Yes, please get me out of here. Now on other shifts, when you're coming in at eight, nothing is really happening when you get there. It's not a big turning point for anything. At least if you're staffed properly, it shouldn't be. Now sometimes the six o'clock people get in and they're stuck there until eight because somebody else called in sick or whatever. And then you might be relief for them, but nothing super critical is happening on those middle shifts. So, I feel like walking through the door at eight is probably fine to take a few minutes to sign in, do your weather brief, sign off any reading initials or whatever has to happen and get in there within a few minutes of eight, but it's not super critical. So like I said, you come in, you sign in, there's a computer dedicated to just signing in and then it's displaying who's on position, what position they're on, how long they've been there, where they were last, did they come from break, did they come from another position, et cetera. It sort of paints the picture of operationally what is going on. Then there's a computer dedicated to weather briefing and hitting play on the weather brief and putting your initials in there. And it's usually like 30 seconds long, 45 seconds long. A lot of it is extraneous. They're talking about stuff in the flight levels and the winds and temperatures like I don't care. But anyway, and then your briefings and stuff that might have to take place. A lot of that is just automated on a computer. You read through a PDF, sign your initials, with a pen and move on. Then your assignment, they've changed this. The assignment sheet used to be out in the hallway and it was set up the way that a shift would look in terms of all of the different shifts coming in. And then next to your initials would be a T or an R, or a T, Slant R or an R, Slant T. In my case, when it says T, I just sign out and then walk out of the building and I drive home. And that is a pretty, it's a pretty easy day. I'm kidding. So they've moved the assignment sheet now into the Treycon. So now you have to walk in the Treycon and say, I did my weather briefing, which they could see anyway. Right. And get your assignment that way. Okay. And then off you go. Okay, so how does that, who does that and how do they determine who goes where? I mean, if you're the person who is in charge, it's your shift, there's no supervisor there, which I think now is a little bit less common since we have good staffing on that side of the building. How would you decide if you were in charge? How do you, where do you send people? What are you doing? A lot of that is going to center around who is there for training and where they're training and who their trainers are. So if a trainee is coming in at seven and they're a radar person and their trainer got there at six, I'm thinking, okay, let's put those people together in radar and then whoever's leftover goes to the tower and then you just kind of figure it out from there because you can sort of project out, okay, my eight o'clock that's coming in, they have a trainee that's in the tower so they're going to go to the tower. If there's another eight, I'll leave them down, you know, kind of whatever. Okay. I think this part is a good time to talk about, you're staffing two different places and historically, generally speaking, for most of the shift, if not the entire shift, you're in one room. Yeah, we try to do it that way, so you're not up and down. Yeah. And some days you may want to do that. Oh, I only have to do one run in the tower and then I can go do real work downstairs in the radar room. Yeah, sign me up. Yeah, that does happen, yeah. But if you have a T or an R next to your name, now it's in the straight gone, you got to go in there and see people, gross and talk to people. Like don't make me walk in there and then tell me I got to go to the tower because that's like punching me twice. Yeah. You made me come in here just to say get out of here. Yeah. Why would you do this to me? Yeah. It's really annoying. And if you are designated to the tower, you're typically up there the whole shifts. At the end of the day, towards, when there's only a few people in the building and you're getting ready for the mids, that may change, there may be some moving around, but generally speaking, you're in one room for the whole day. Each room relies on a certain number of people and this is where air traffic controllers are, I think at our finest, we're figuring out a break rotation. We don't need anybody to show us what to do. We will figure it out. So in general, somebody has to be on break all the time. Yes. If nobody's on break, then nobody's getting off position. There's no rotation happening. Yes, the rotation must be established. And a rotation, let's just say in the tower, you're typically staff, is it still normal eyes to staff, grand and clearance combined? Yeah. Outside of training? Outside of training, but there have been times where we have the people. Now, the agency typically wants us to stand, staff, standalone, in charge, over clearance. I am wholeheartedly against that, completely against it. The combination of ground and clearance when it is busy is one of the hardest positions in the building. Period. And now you're distracting a person whose sole job is to look out the windows with stuff that they have to be heads down, typing, reading, making amendments. They're not looking outside and you're forcing them to do that. It isn't just a choice that you get to make, like, oh, I'm not gonna look inside. Well, I'm working clearance. That's impossible. Right. So, instead of splitting clearance off and having somebody who doesn't have to look outside. Clearance being in charge combined. Yes. Yeah, okay. They wanna have a standalone, all that person is doing is in charge. Right. Watching the ground and clearance person flounder around. Right, tubing, big time. Yes. Yeah, that makes no sense. It doesn't make sense. But in fairness to them, a lot of controllers don't wanna split clearance off. It's an uphill battle for me. That I'm probably, I will never win. All right, let's talk about it in general terms then. Let's assume that that third position is a standalone. So there's three people that are on position. A local controller, which is the tower, ground and clearance combined, going down the tubes. Everybody's laughing at them. Ha, ha, you get your chance over there, have fun. And then a standalone person who's basically doing nothing except staying there in charge, let's be honest. Listening to both. Yeah. Ideally, but then that gets super difficult to do. You can't. Listening to, you're listening to three frequencies. Impossible, don't do that. That's great. Is that really what their expectation is? Yes, yes, yes. That you're monitoring. Yes, absolutely. I could see monitoring one, but not both. Like, come on. Okay, so in order for those three positions to be open on from eight to let's say five at night, that's fair, general. You need four people to do that. You need someone to run a rotation. Someone to be on break. When that person comes back, guess who they get? Who's been on position longest? Unless they have to move and do some shifting around to get their trainee who's training on ground and clearance. Now we get to watch them flounder for two hours. But my point of mentioning that is that you can't just have the number of people that you need positions open. You need somebody on break or everybody stuck and nobody moves. In theory, we should only be doing about an hour and a half to two hours on position before you get a break. And after doing an hour and a half on ground and clearance combined, these center people are laughing at us talking about this. I cannot wait to see you try to do that one day. It's not as easy as it sounds. Yeah, the likelihood of two airplanes touching on the ground. Yeah, okay, they're gonna see each other. So it's not the most urgent, but it's very busy. It's very busy. It is. Now there's one caveat to planes touching and that is runway crossings. As ground, you are responsible for that portion of, you know, you're part of coordinating runway crossing. And the more stuff you pile on to this person on clearance with their head down is the more distraction for stuff that is critical like that. And planes on runways move very fast. Yeah, so that I think that is the reason, that is the reason that I like clearance open better than standalone. Now, we have enough supervisors right now that almost always in the tower, when standalone is required, it is done by a soup who doesn't have to take, they don't take breaks. Okay. They're just up there and they're not, they don't factor into the rotation. Okay, well that's sort of a consolation, that's good. It is and it frees up a body and it allows us to run to have a longer break. All right, so let's talk about the breaks and then we'll briefly mention the rotation downstairs and how those positions work, but how's the normal break work? How long are you gone? What are you doing? Is lunch longer or those type of things? Yeah, lunch, if you're on a light shift, typically lunch, is a little bit longer, but our average break is 30 to 45 minutes and you're getting one of those every, that just really depends on how much training you're trying to accomplish, what the staffing is, but an hour and a half is probably the minimum that you're gonna spend. And yesterday I had some two hour sits, you know, close to two hours. So, but let's just say an hour and a half on 45, 30 to 45 off depending on what you have going on. All right, so like say there's two positions in a building on a slower part of the day and the third person's on break, if they're on a 45 minute break, when they come back, you've been on position for an hour and a half, you're going to 45, now the person you relieve when you come back has been on position for an hour and a half. That part controllers are really good at, if you skip a break, you're trying to slot yourself, get ready for the end of the day, that happens a lot too, gotta be careful of that, certain people who are more guilty of slots than others. Yeah. All right, so how does it work downstairs? Typically we have Western final combined and South radar open, who's staffing the middle, the data and phones and is that usually in charge also? Yeah, but right now we have a lot of trainees that are certified on flight data downstairs that is allowing us to staff that and free up the soup to do soup stuff, because they do have things to do back there. So that has been good, that's definitely been a benefit of having a person to staff flight data, most of the busy part of the day. The reason that's important is because when I'm on Western final and I'm totally tubed and there isn't a flight data person and I need an amendment like yesterday, but the soup's back there on the phone reading a clearance to somebody, now what? Now it's a massive distraction, now I'm either having to do it myself or maybe I could get the South guy, if he's not as busy to do the amendment. But I really may not have time. Let me explain this to the center controllers, what are you talking about, you have to do it yourself. There's a computer that's like four feet away that has its own keyboard, they don't have a query keyboard, they cannot do this amendment at their position. So we're in the center when they hook that thing up to the back of your head like Neo and you get plugged into the matrix and you just think it and all your amendments get made and you think about all the handoffs and point outs you gotta do and it just happens. We have to do those things in a trick. Yeah, manually. You have to move physically, type somewhere else and if there's someone else that can do that for you, we don't have a D side, we don't have a little radar assistant over there going, what can I do next for you, sir? That's just. That isn't happening. I'm making fun of D sides, I've never had one, but wouldn't it be nice? It would be nice. Sorry, I got distracted there making fun of center. How easy was that? It's okay. What do you do on your brakes? How do you decompress? Is there a such thing? It just kind of depends. Like yesterday because the weather was so nice, the sun was out, it was 60 degrees. I went for walks. Twice I went outside and on one of those, I came back and ate lunch after a walk. If it's not nice outside, there's a little couch room, a quiet room, you can actually turn the lights off. That's one of my complaints in this building is that almost all the lights are on automatic motion sensors that you cannot shut off. That stinks. And when we're there late, I don't want it to be like daytime everywhere. All right, let me put you in a different position here. Defend brakes for air traffic. It sounds on paper, if you didn't know anything about actually working airplanes and the session stress associated with that, that could be low, it could be high one day, defend the brakes. What is the purpose of that break? And why is it so long? Because in the civilian world, 30 minutes to 45 minutes sounds like, dude, why would you ever complain? Of just doing nothing? Yeah. Right. It's an easy thing, like you said, to think, this is ridiculous, why couldn't we have one less person and then just not do 10 minute breaks or whatever. That is something that someone that has never worked air traffic would say. If you sit for an hour and a half or two hours and you're busy like yesterday, you are exhausted mentally and somewhat physically exhausted. And it might not be high stress, but it is high mental workload, as high a mental workload as you have ever experienced in your life. With stakes that are, I promise, if you have never done this job, are almost certainly higher unless you're a surgeon or somebody like that, stakes that are higher than you've ever had to even think about. Okay, and I'm being serious. You make mistakes in this job, it can be really consequential. Give me a break, literally. Right. I want some time off. That was exhausting and it was stressful. You the flying public, I am speaking to you now. Do you want your controller to having, well, I'm telling you, at the end of an hour and a half of busy, I'm done. If I had to do two hours of busy, it's starting to get to the point where this is, this might not really be entirely safe. Which is built in, that's why the sessions shouldn't be longer than that. That's when decision making ability erodes rapidly. It's a cliff. Yes. Two hours. Okay, all right, so you're out there and you're flying in a plane and it's busy. Do you want me to, at three? Do you want me at three and a half? Complete mental mush? Or do you want me to come back rested after a nice break? 10 minutes is not enough. Agreed. I think you made a very good point there. All right, I'll walk you through that. You come back and you had just gotten an hour and a half to two hours of hard work. For me, that hard work was on West and final. Everywhere else was, every other position in the building, in my opinion, was to support that position. That's how I looked at the other positions. Don't get in their ear, feed them nicely, little spoonfuls at a time, good food, not terrible food, good food, be nice to them, pick up their landlines if they're busy and you can help, do whatever you can to help them. So you just got done with that. You go on a break, you eat, you've totally forgotten about that session. How would you feel if I put you right back on it again? That same position. Yeah. That could be a burden, just mentally when you come back and you're thinking, I'm going to South because that's the next guy up, right? But no, you're going to get West and that guy's going to slide over to South and train somebody or whatever. Okay. It makes me mad thinking about it because it happened to me all the time. If you're a guy that's not going to be a good guy, you're going to be a bad guy. It makes me mad thinking about it because it happened to me all the time. If you're not training somebody, you're going to get that, you're going to be that person who does the same position. The bump and slide. The bump and slide. Oh, that's what it is. It's the bump and slide. And so, that's what we call it. I'm bumping you over and you slide over to South and here I am on West and Final again. Again. You did that all day, like three sessions of an hour and a half. That might not come to work tomorrow. I'll pay you back. For real? People have done. I will pay you back for this. Yeah. I'm doing two days of work today, my friend. It's a lot to ask if it's busy on a Thursday, you know, on a Thursday afternoon when we're usually the busiest. Weather's nice. I felt the same way about having to do repeat sessions on one runways closed. Everybody laughs. That does create stress in a parallel environment when you're used to it. One runways closed. It's busy. It's middle of the day and you get stuck back on ground in clearance again. Unhappy RH. Very grumpy. Very, very grumpy. It's a fairness and a perception of fairness in the room. When you are tasked with the majority of the work while other people train on easier positions, you can get resentful very quickly. It makes for a very long day. It does. And if you try to get me to do a short break to make this easier for somebody else, that's another way to really upset me. No, no, no. You can't have me doing all the work and taking no breaks. I'm taking normal breaks. I'm not bending over backwards on my breaks to make your day easier. No. I'm already doing that by doing all the hard work in here. Right. And eventually I need to be rewarded for this with some soups are really good at this. Hey, we've been doing this to you all day long. We're going to give you a longer break. Go. We'll figure it out. There's somebody coming in at 11, take an hour. Okay. I've almost forgiven you entirely for what you've done to me the last four hours. Right. That's a currency in the room, is breaks. Yeah. Is that fair assessment? Yeah. Yeah, it is. You know, I highly doubt that anybody in echelons above us in the FAA is listening to this. No. But this is what I would say to them. You need to think about people less like machines and a couple of blocks on an on an Excel spreadsheet, filling a time slot. Okay. And more like people. I am not a machine. And just saying, I don't like how this looks on paper. We need to spend more time on position and less time on break. Is ignoring the human part of this? It is ignoring the human part. And it doesn't change financially anything. Those people are there anyway. They're there anyway. You're there paying them. The work is getting done. You're just making their lives more miserable. Right. So that looks better on paper for someone that has no idea what's really happening at the operational level. Right. One of the best managers that I worked with. And you know, I worked with a few said something one day that for this person to say it, I was surprised. And I don't know if they listen to this show or not. Maybe they do. They admitted it once. Everything is in support of the controller. Everything else in the FAA on the air traffic side is in support of the person operationally at that position. All the admins, all the QAQC, all the supervisors, everything is in support of them. Separating airplanes. Yes. That is the point of what we're doing here. That is the point of this building. Yes. Of this giant tube sticking up out of the earth and those people up in the top of it. The whole point of that is to separate airplanes. Yeah. And don't forget they're humans. They're people. They have feelings. They have limitations. They need time away. You push them too hard and it doesn't go the right way. It doesn't work. So zooming out to the point of this feedback, the day in the life, the controllers are people. They're not unlike a lot of places in the world where you work and you need breaks and you do something. One of the benefits of this job is that there are multiple positions. You're not going to do the same thing over and over. You're not putting the square into the square hole all day long. You're solving puzzles. You're moving around. You might be on a position you don't like for a few hours a day. You're going to get better. Yeah. If people ask me, why did you leave air traffic? I get that a lot. Well, I really love that job. They don't understand, well, then why aren't you there? I love this job too. I really enjoy being an airline pilot too. I didn't leave the job because I didn't like it. I loved air traffic. And one of the things that I loved about it was the variety. I knew every day wouldn't be the same. I made fun of the whole like I was dramatic about having to go to the tower, but honestly, sometimes that was a great distraction and break from always doing radar. It was nice to have that. It was nice to have a day where I was doing something different. It made the day go by faster sometimes. People ask me too, is it super stressful? There are times when it was. But my happiest place was probably on West and Final working a puzzle. Yeah. No distractions. Just leave me alone. Let me work. Right. And the days go by super fast. I've worked a lot of different jobs. Yeah. When you're doing like that and you're solving puzzles all day, yes, it does. It goes by very fast. Which is good. Before you know it, you're on your way home. Yeah. Yeah. You know, on the human part and on the stress part, it isn't just the work. It's also the schedule and the lifestyle that introduces a lot of stress. And that part is what drives a lot of people away. And we have had people resign recently because of that aspect. The schedule. And so that would be my other thing I would say to people in the upper levels of the FAA. You're pushing only results in having less people and only making it even worse. So, you know, there has to be some kind of balance in quality of life or retaining people is going to be impossible. And it is proving to be that. Yeah. Anyway. Let's end on a positive note. Okay. It is one of the coolest jobs I've ever had. Some of the little intricacies and the other negatives associated with it. But overall, the job itself of actually working airplanes, which is a chunk of your day, not all of it, is really fun. It is a fun job to actually sit down and do some of the in-between stuff and administrative and all the other things kind of cloud that up sometimes. But the act of working airplanes is really a fun job. Yeah. So you're looking at like probably over five hours of the day, you're plugged in talking to planes. Or in my case, you're plugged in listening to someone else talk to planes, training them. But you're not going to be able to do that. But you are working probably five and a half hours of the day. And the other is spent on break. When you're plugged in working, especially when it's moderately or more busy, and you're really doing the job and you're really making hard decisions and solving a puzzle, solving a problem, it's super rewarding. I love it. I absolutely love it. And it's just putting up with and dealing with all the other stuff that has to go along with that. Sometimes that's hard. So. Cool. I think we have some. At the end of the shift, so they give you kind of a cool down at the end where you get off position and you're there for a little bit, which I think is actually kind of important to just not like go get in your car and drive away super upset. Just wait a little bit and cool down and try to settle down. Yeah. So 20 minutes later when you get to your house, you're thinking about work anymore? Where's that gone? It depends. I'm not thinking about working airplanes. But yesterday when they dumped two weeks of overtime on me at right at the end of the shift. That was mean. Man, I was upset. My schedule starting in a week from now for two weeks is really, really bad. It's really bad. And yes, it was upsetting. That was not a great way to send me out the building. Maybe that's the flavor I have in my mouth today about the taste I have in my mouth. Well, I did these show notes before we had that talk yesterday and I felt kind of like the timing of this was a little bit off. That's okay. You're smiling and having fun though. I am. Yeah, I am. Excellent. I think we answered most of the questions in there. We might have gone down a few rabbit holes, but what do you expect from us? That's what we do. Listen, we're not here to sugarcoat anything. We're not here. I'm not a recruiter for air traffic. The point of the show was always to give it to you real, to give it to you. Honest, the real thing. Oh, everyone loves it. It's going to be so great. Come in, come and do this job. It's for everyone. It's amazing. Yeah, there are parts of it like that. But there are parts of it that are hard. It isn't for everyone. It isn't. And so I feel like we've always tried to do that to the best of our ability, is give it to you straight about what this is about, about what this job is about, and try to remove the sanitary black and white, 7110, you know, aspect of this is the rule and this is how we do it and give you the real life, the real thing that happens on a day-to-day basis. I feel like we've done a pretty good job of that. I agree with that. Okay, good. Cool. It's very good. Moving on. Moving on. Feedback time. Feedback. I'll get number one from Supercaster Lino Bravo. Their announcement for the check ride was above. Here was the note they sent. The instrument rating is relatively, what did they call it? They had a new term for it, BIR. Let me read it from the feedback. The basic instrument rating, so we're in a different country here, is a relatively new ticket option for European GA pilots, given them all the advantages of IFR flying, but with slightly higher minimums and RVR requirements. Huh, minimum of 600 foot ceilings at your departure destination and alternate airport before departing and adding 200 feet to all the decision altitudes. This is feedback worthy of itself right there. What do you think of that? I love that. I love this. Like it's almost like probationary instrument rating. Yeah. That is fantastic. They've built in sort of regulatory personal minimums for this rating. Yeah. I feel it's a great way to allow us the benefits of instrument flying while whilst keeping a reasonable safety margin as we build more experience. I could not agree more. Following OB's advice, as part of my training, I signed up for a few days of real IMC time at a flight school in the Czech Republic, hand flying in non-icing conditions, clouds from 600 feet AGL to minimums, which was, as predicted, a humbling experience. Not relying on our autopilot and multitasking the actual flying, the situational awareness slash navigation, the communication and procedural steps of an approach is like a choreography that requires constant training and exposure. So like many have said before, this new rating definitely feels like an invitation to continue to learn. Kind of crazy that professional pilots will divvy up these tasks between them, but we're fine with the low time general aviation pilot attempting all of this on their own. Just go ahead and insert comment. We have been saying that for a long time. So I never flew single pilot IFR. Ever. We always were two pilots. Two pilots. And when I was kind of exposed to the GA world through air traffic and a lot through the show of the amount of people single piloting IMC to low ceilings, I'm like, what? Why? Yeah. That's a lot. Right. In professional environments, you're dividing it up really between three. Two able-bodied, rated, professional pilots and automation that sometimes doesn't exist in the GA level. A lot of them have it now, but autopilots that can take you very close to the ground. That's three different people doing other things versus one single pilot IFR. And I know I've said it before, it's probably the most challenging endeavor a pilot will ever be tasked with in the civilian world. It's very difficult. Yeah, it's no joke. They continue, the check ride itself was actually a lot of fun. I even got to fly a PAR approach to Minimum, said a local Navy base, and no need to ask for a hold as we were dealt a real one because of a real emergency with some bigger iron before us. Pro tip to myself, don't drink too much coffee before a future check ride. That's actually part of the ACS, my friend. As flying a long hold while admitting to ATC, you have plenty of fuel. Could make your bladder capacity a real emergency. Everybody says, how far can you go in that skyhawk? It doesn't matter. I don't have a bathroom in this place. Five hours. It doesn't matter. Happy I could add this privilege to my European private pilot rating and hoping I can repeat the exercise in other airspace as I try to manage the menagerie of bilingual penguins on a symmetrical iceberg that floats between the FAA and the European equivalent, IASA, shores, my next step will be to attempt to get my full FAA instrument rating too. I would be willing to bet just based on anecdotal evidence for pilots that I watched do conversions that you won't have a hard time converting it. I think our requirements are a little bit more humane, especially in the testing environment. Go ahead and do that. That'd be great. If I succeed as a bonus, I will be able to file and fly IFR in the UK NAS too so I can avoid the dreaded, I'm going to mess this up when I'm trying my best, squawk conspicuity instruction. In case you don't remember that instruction is the instruction for transponder code 7000, the equivalent to 1200 in the US, and a true tongue twister. Looking forward to more OB learning. Keep up the good work. All right, we have a short audio to play and they won't butcher this. You ready to play it? What? Did I say it wrong? No, no. I just am thinking only the British would have to insert some difficult- How can we make this fancy- Impossible to repeat. All right, I'm ready to play. One, two, three. Today I talk about pilots getting tongue tied. It has to be the most difficult thing to say in UK radio telephony. It used to be just squawk 7000 or squawk VFR. Now it's squawk conspic- squawk conspic- squawk conspicuity. Squawk in form tango approved. Squawk conspicuity. 7000 fly. Squawk VFR tango. Golf in the victor request frequency change line and information 124.6. Squawk in the victor approved. Squawk conspicuity. Squawk conspicuity. Golf in the victor. That's an interesting word, isn't it? Conspicuity. No, it's a real mouthful as well. Seriously, somebody had to be thinking this is too easy to say squawk VFR, squawk 1200. Well, what should we do? Well, let's use a very abstract word from the dictionary that's hard to pronounce and make them do it like 50 times a day. They'll get really good at it. I would have to practice that. Leading up to this change. Conspicuity. Conspicuity. You did great. You crushed it. That was your first attempt. You're unique New York. Unique New York. Can you imagine the build up in the room? Because people would know you'd have to say it soon. So they would be staring at you, pointing. Let's see if they do it this time. Yeah. Meanwhile, in the US, squawk VFR frequency change approved and the pilot just responds, squawking and talking. Have a good day. Nothing proper here. Excellent feedback. Congratulations on your rating. Thank you for making me say hard words. And I apologize to all the normal bingo players that that would have been a bingo, probably a bingo, right then. Of me trying to say that word. Do you want number two? Number two from Supercaster Sierra Romeo Delta. A.G. and R.H. in a recent episode, you discussed anti-ice versus de-ice. Your explanation was somewhat correct. Okay. As you pointed out, anti-ice is put on any time you operate in icing conditions, generally defined as temperatures below 10 Celsius and visible moisture, unless the temperature is below minus 40. And then there's no moisture in that precipitation. It's very dry. A good example of this is an engine anti-ice on most turbofan and turboprop aircraft. You couldn't remember that. Yeah. I've listened to that episode recently where I was struggling to remember that some general aviation aircraft and maybe jets to have some parts of their plane with electric systems that have basically heated surface using electricity. I just stumbled on that. In the turboprop and jet world, that hot air is typically bled off the engine, somewhere in the phase of where it's being compressed when it gets shoved out the back as propulsion. They borrow that hot air and heat up a surface. So anyway, continue. So de-ice, however, is put on at the first indication of icing, either visually or by an ice detector. This includes aircraft equipped with de-ice boots, which you implied some levels of icing had to build up before they were effective. That was wrong. So it is, well, okay, we were always taught in the King Air that had boots that as soon as you detected icing, that blowing the boots was going to accomplish nothing. And I personally witnessed that until you let it build up just a little bit enough to where it formed a sort of a solid layer on the leading edge, and then inflating the boots actually did remove it and allowed it to break up. So we were always told to allow that build up. I think we're talking about a fine line here of, okay, we have a surface like a windshield wiper blade or something where I could see a little bit of, if I just turn them on then, and I just expand the boot and make it bigger, this rubber bladder on the front of the wing, if I just make it bigger then, then all I'm doing is creating a new surface for ice to accumulate on it, at which point I'll have nothing to do to get it off. That's, I'm trying to say it without saying you have to let it build up to the point of it causing an aerodynamic problem, which is what we're going to hear about in the next paragraph. But there has to be something on it for it to work. Otherwise, you're just making a surface for the ice to build on that's expanded with air. Does that make sense? So what you're saying, yes, there's a fine line though, you can't go too far because now the boots just won't work. Right. Continue, sorry. Okay, so the FAA and most all manufacturers recommend or require de-ice boots to be activated at the first indication of icing, not after the accumulation of a certain amount of ice, failing to do so has contributed to accidents such as the Comair 3272 where the crew delayed activating the de-ice boots and icing conditions as the Comair Embraer 120 procedure was contrary to the manufacturer procedure. Keep up the great work as much as you're in the peanut gallery and throw feces then put together a weekly podcast. See, I wrote me dealt with, well, thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'd have to go back and look and see what the King Air. It's probably written very legally, you know, legally is like where yeah, you, it gets cold when you hit a cloud. If you turn it on, then we, we haven't really done anything except make a new surface for it to kill us. All right. So at the first indication of icing, okay, what do you define that as? All right, I see icing building up on this leading edge that has a boot. All right, blow the boots. All right, then it should fall off. Wash, rinse, repeat. Keep doing that. Yeah. I'm sure it's written in a way in each manual and I apologize for implying that it had to be a buildup to the point of, you know, that accident was caused by that they waited too long and the boots didn't work. And now they have this wing with too much ice to get rid of and it didn't end well. Right. So refer to your flight manual, not podcasters on when to Yeah, right. deploy your boots, please. Yes. And if you're unsure of when to do that, find someone who knows and ask them not us. Yeah, no, not us. But thank you, Sierra Romeo Delta for pointing out how stupid I am. Well, I mean, I successfully lived through several icing scenarios in the King Air, wherein we did allow not a lot, but more than just a tiny trace, little bit, it would have done nothing. It just would have done absolutely nothing. Okay. So anyway, you're right. Refer to your manual. I get number three. Okay. From Supercaster Delta Zulu, what's up, R.H. and A.J. Just a quick feedback to tell you I arranged the local trade contour for my EAA chapter and I asked one of the radar guys if they had a controller with atrocious settings. He didn't miss a beat. Oh, yeah. He exclaimed. He said everyone there would agree with him about who it was. I asked him to show me and even I could see it was pretty harsh. Every feature was at full brightness. And there was a ton of clutter. So I'd like to suggest for anyone who takes a facility tour, ask who their controller is with the atrocious settings. Cheers Delta Zulu. Tell everybody what that means. All right. So when we got stars and we and we went from the old like 60s looking sweep like the mash. Yeah. Yeah. Right. To this new late 20th century technology. There were all these little things you could turn on. You could turn on predictive track lines, history, a compass around the outside. Don't get me started on that. See, you got you made me mad. All of the things. All these little gadgets and things you could turn on. Well, our controller quickly learned that that leaving those on really bothered people. R.H. being one. This cemented in his mind that he must then he must therefore just to be contrary, leave these settings this way. And he has to this day. They're so distracting. There is terrible brightness. I don't remember being a problem. It was just the number of things that he had turned on the compass being one of them like dude, if you've been doing this job for like two decades of your life, if you don't know where West is, we got bigger problems. You don't need that compass on the screen. Well, he has to have it. Yep. He puts up the P the PTL's projected track lines, which is a time meter. That's like a stick that moves in front of each airplane, which can be helpful if you have like goldfish memory and forget what planes are doing. I could see, Hey, I need this for a few minutes. Yeah. I use 30 second lines. Okay. On everybody. Okay. It is helpful. And that that eliminates the need for a history trail. I don't like history either. So because I don't either. I don't like these little worms all over the it looks like worms. It's like a video game. Your whole screen is these little blue fading dots. Yeah, I don't like it. So the PTL sticking out 30 seconds is not bad. Also, when an aircraft is on base for the ILS, 30 seconds is about the time to take a 90 degree turn. So if you get them, if you turn them just prior to that stick getting to the final, it's a great, great turn on great way to yeah, okay, help you that way. I love this technique. Asking that room and I realize that you speak a little bit of air traffic to you will have gained a little bit of street credibility. And they will probably answer your questions with more honesty, when you're speaking their language. So okay, but our our atrocious settings guy has two minute PTLs. When an aircraft checks in at 12,000 going 400 knots. That's a long stick. It's like sticks going all over the narwhals, we call them little narwhals sticking out of the correct me if I'm wrong, that stick is based on a projection of path so it can wobble a little bit because the system it does move around and it overcorrects in a turn, it will go past the turn and then come back. Oh, no, it's basically history extended out. Okay, at the speed of the plane for however long you have it set for two minutes is outrageous and tracon world. See, this controller is more than capable of operating this position without these tools on with none of it. So they're only doing it to spite everyone else. Yes. Hey, look what I did over here. You see this Picasso? I know it looks like a third grader with a crayon. I know, but it's beautiful. Isn't it? No, it's not. It's ugly. He knew what bothered me. The end. Yeah. All right, very good. Delta Tzul, thank you for that. We do our best to respond to support a feedback and let them know when they'll be on an upcoming show. The inbox is being very managed right now. I put out a plea for new feedbacks. We got it. We've answered some and we're keeping up with that the best we can. So that's good on that front. Excellent. Anything to add before the chat? I do not. Closing out episode 424 of opposing basis air traffic talk Romeo hotel and Alpha Golf. Goodbye, everyone. Drop opposing basis is a listener supported ad free weekly podcast. The views expressed on the show do not reflect the opinions or official positions of the FAA or penguin airlines. Episodes are for entertainment purposes only and are not intended to replace flight instruction. To get on time access, bonus content and full archive access, join the crew at opposing basis.supercast.com. Yeah.