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ATC Training

A group blog by ATC Training in Division Updates

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Contributors to this blog

  • Daniel Crookes 35
  • Andy Ford 33
  • Samuel James 30
  • Adam Farquharson 17
  • Oliver Rhodes 16
  • Adam Arkley 9
  • Alex Beard 9
  • George Wright 3
  • Fraser Cooper 3
  • Kieran Hardern 3
  • Nathan Donnelly 2
  • Sebastian Rekdal 2
  • Fergus Walsh 2
  • Chris Pawley 2
  • Jack Edwards 2
  • Simon Irvine 1
  • Craig Stewart 1
  • Kye Taylor 1
  • Reece Buckley 1
  • Will Jennings 1

About this blog

Entries in this blog

Division Instructor Staff Changes

Hi all, Please could you join me in thanking @Phillip Speer for his unreserved dedication and commitment to VATSIM UK over the past 15 years. Phillip will be leaving our team of Division Instructors as he settles into new personal circumstances. For those of you who may not know Phillip, he started mentoring for the Division in 2006 (at which point I was 7...) and joined the staff team in 2008. Phillip has fulfilled numerous staff roles in the UK and always has, without fail, contributed to
Daniel Crookes

Daniel Crookes

9
Staff Changes

Training Group 2 Manager

Dear all It gives me great pleasure to announce that @James Edwards will be joining the staff team as TG2 TGM. He will be replacing Leon, who will be transitioning into his role as a Community Manager. Both will be fulfilling the TGM role for now, while James gets to grips with his new role. Please join me in congratulating James on his new role. Alex
Alex Beard

Alex Beard in Staff Changes

8
ATC Training

CTS Controller Booking Etiquette

Hi all, Following a couple of queries and concerns raised over the last couple of days, I wanted to post a reminder of booking etiquette, particularly for new members who've joined fairly recently and might not be aware of the conventions. The website regulates that "booking shall not be excessive in duration", which is deliberately a rather vague rule (perhaps the main source of confusion). "Excessive" is a difficult term to define, as what may be considered excessive in one case may
Oliver Rhodes

Oliver Rhodes in ATC Training

8
ATC Training

Military ACC Course - Released

We are pleased to announce the release of our Military Area Radar Moodle Course and the re-introduction of Military ACC endorsements. A massive thank you to Callum Presley and Lee Roberts for creating this course for us. The course is open to view to all members. Members holding a permanent controller rating of C1 or C3 and also a Military APC endorsement are invited to take the exam (please submit a ticket to the helpdesk to have the exam enabled) at the end of the course to gain their Mil
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

7
ATC Training

Changes to the Manchester Familiarisation Sessions and Gatwick Endorsement

Hi all, Over the past couple of months, me and Josh have spoken to mentors and students to see what could be improved in regards to S1 continuation training. The most common things that cropped up were that the Manchester Familiarisation Sessions weren't getting used to their full and proper potential, and that the Gatwick Endorsement was not properly training people. Here are the changes that we have made;Manchester Familiarisation: As some of you may be aware, TG New Controller, along with the
Fergus Walsh

Fergus Walsh in ATC Training

7
Staff Changes

TG Enroute

Evening all, A small public service announcement! @Phillip Speer will be stepping aside from his role as TGI TG Enroute; he has built up enough of a pension (so he tells me...) to warrant just one staff position so will be remaining as a DI. With that being said, I have officially granted our in-house Norwegian a VATSIM pension, therefore, he will be taking on the role of TGI TG Enroute, @Sebastian Rekdal in case you know any more Norwegians! Sebastian will be carrying on the exce
Daniel Crookes

Daniel Crookes in Staff Changes

7

Heathrow TGI Resignation

Hi everyone, I have taken the unfortunate decision to leave my role as Heathrow TGI. I have loved people part of the VATSIM UK team for the past few years and will hopefully try it out again in the future, but with my limited amount of time currently and slight burn out from VATSIM, I feel that it would be selfish for me to hold on to the role, so therefore I am passing TGI on to someone with new and fresh ideas that can benefit the division. I joined the staff team in February 2019 (crazy
Fergus Walsh

Fergus Walsh

7
ATC Training

Shifting Focus: Approach Training

Following on from the restructuring of our S2 syllabus, we are now in a position to release the first version of our restructured S3 syllabus. Thank you to everyone who commented and gave feedback on the request for comments thread. The key points of this re-thinking of our syllabus are as follows: A number of competencies have been designated as self-taught. In the past, these were included in practical mentoring reports, which led to some students assuming that the mentor would teac
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

6
ATC Training

British Summer Time (BST) begins Sunday 29th March at 01:00

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring At 1am on Sunday 29th March the clocks will advance one hour. This means that 1am will immediately become 2am, cruelly stealing from us an hour of our day. <insert traditional joke here> For those of you
Oliver Rhodes

Oliver Rhodes in ATC Training

6
Staff Changes

Training Staff Changes

Evening all! On the theme of staff changes, we have some faces leaving us in Training - please see below a summary of who is leaving. @Ben Cook New Controller Training Group Instructor - Ben joined us in September last year where he worked alongside the rest of the team to maintain and develop our OBS-S1 and Gatwick endorsement training. He has been a key player in projects such as the introduction of our S1 syllabus, new S1 aerodromes, and Basic training.  Please join me in wishi
Daniel Crookes

Daniel Crookes in Staff Changes

6
ATC Training

Introducing Training Tuesdays

Dear all, In conjunction with the Pilot Training team, I am very pleased to announce the introduction of Training Tuesdays. One of the biggest difficulties that the ATC Training Department face is generating enough traffic to make training viable on the live network, which in turn leads to mentors attempting to use Sweatbox more to generate traffic to train students. The vicious circle develops itself by pilots then seeing a lack of air traffic online in the UK and instead flying e
Adam Arkley

Adam Arkley in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

Shifting Focus: Tower Training

Following feedback received during and following the ATC Training Consultation, the department has been hard at work. One of the points raised during the consultation, that many of you have added your voices to since, is that as a division, we spend a lot of time in our training doing theory. Often, teaching the same thing multiple times and on topics that students should be able to learn for themselves. Some have gone as far as to say that some people expect to be spoon-fed information, like a
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

Solo Enroute Validations (S3)

Effectively immediately, the division will be utilising Solo Enroute Validations (SEV's... or SCV's, if you prefer the American term). These will be granted to S3 rated members upon submission for their CTR exam, in order to have a several days to practice solo without the guidance of a mentor in preparation for the big night. The validations will be valid for a single parent enroute sector and may be used to open relevant splits and TMA positions where division policy permits. The val
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

S1 AFISO/AG Validation: Additional Airfields

Now that things have had time to settle, we're adding some additional aerodromes to the list of those that S1 rated members holding the AFISO/AG validation may control. They are as follows: Barra (EGPR) Bodmin (EGLA) - airfield information sufficient to VATSIM needs is available on the airfields website - Bodmin does not feature in the AIP. Wolverhampton / Halfpenny Green (EGBO) We decided not to add Barrow/Walney Island (EGNL) at this time, due to instrument approach an
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

January Changes

Hi all, After a few months of testing we are adjusting the way that ATC exams are picked up. Previously our Head Examiner has assigned exams to our examiners, the new method will allow examiners to pick up exams without waiting for them to be assigned. Our aim is to minimise the time students are waiting after being submitted for an exam. To ensure that examiner currency and any potential speculative bias is removed, we have set criteria that governs whether an examiner can  pick up and exa
Daniel Crookes

Daniel Crookes in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

ATIS 101

Hi all, Whilst provision of an ATIS is principally the responsibility of the TWR controller, members on all positions - including DEL/GND - are permitted to operate a VATSIM ATIS at any time. Please note that ATIS use is governed by the Global Controller/ATIS Information Policy. The following tutorial shows how to set-up a basic ATIS using EuroScope: 1. Click on the runway icon on the EuroScope ribbon for the runway selection dialog; 2. Scroll down to find the aerodrome
Oliver Rhodes

Oliver Rhodes in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

C1 Training Place Allocation & Hour Requirement Changes

Hi all, Over the past few years, the enroute team have allocated C1 training places on a purely ‘first come, first served’ principle, changing the number of places available for each training sector to suit students’ eligibility. This has ensured overall fairness and parity, but can lead to uneven student:mentor ratios, and therefore uneven training times, on each sector. To rectify this issue, from Saturday 1st May, the number of places available for each training sector will be set,
Oliver Rhodes

Oliver Rhodes in ATC Training

5
ATC Training

S1 Gatwick Endorsements - Hours Checker

Hi all, From listening to the feedback we’ve had over the past few weeks about the recently introduced Gatwick endorsement scheme, we’ve realised that the requirements to start training for the endorsement could be made clearer.  From today, thanks to some fantastic work by the Web team, we’re introducing a new system to guide you through the process of gaining your Gatwick endorsement. If you are currently an S1-rated controller, you can go to this page to use the new system. If
Oliver Rhodes

Oliver Rhodes in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

Military PAR Course - Released

We are pleased to announce the release of our Military Precision Approach Radar (PAR) Online Moodle Course. This course is for those members that want to take their Military Approach controlling up a notch, offering pilots the opportunity to be talked all the way down the final approach (similar to a SRA), with vectors and glideslope information. A massive thank you to Trevor Hannant and Callum Presley for creating this course for us. The course is open for all members to view and self-enro
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

S3 Training at Heathrow

With the appropriate staff and support now in place, we are pleased to announce the resumption of Approach Radar (S2->S3) training for UK Students at Heathrow. Heathrow will draw from the existing waiting lists of TG1 and TG2. When a training place becomes available, it will be offered to the first eligible student on one of the lists. Completion of training will result in the awarding of an S3 rating and the Heathrow APP Major Endorsement. Solo Approach Validations (SAV's) will be handl
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

S2 and S3 Theory Questions: Revisited

Many of you who have taken your S2 and S3 theory exams recently may have noticed that quite a few of the questions weren't exactly relevant and some were, well, too easy. It turns out that some of our theory questions are very old, with some of the S3 questions dating back to the pre-GRP days when S2 didn't exist and S3 was in-part a TWR rating. You will all be glad to know (or maybe not, if you were hoping for an easy pass!) that we have removed a lot of questions and added new ones to ref
Andy Ford

Andy Ford in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

S2 Moodle Course Release

It’s finally here! After many years of anticipation and speculation (we’re not sure exactly when we started it, but we have found a reference to a new Moodle platform in some meeting minutes from October 2011), we finally have eLearning materials available on our Moodle platform for our S2 course! The course is divided into six sections - Introduction to ADC, Aerodrome Control Phraseology, Meteorology, Separation, VFR Traffic, and Aerodrome Operations - with a short quiz at the end of each
Daniel Crookes

Daniel Crookes in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

TG Tower Staff Changes

Hi all, Firstly I’d like to thank everyone for the kind messages following the announcement of my appointment as ATC Training Director. Having moved roles this left a space in the TWR team which a couple of people quickly expressed their interest in. Following a few discussions we have decided to appoint @Kye Taylor to the role.  Kye joined the Training Department 15 months ago as a New Controller TG Instructor. Having been involved in many projects including the development of th
Adam Farquharson

Adam Farquharson in ATC Training

4
ATC Training

Waiting List Changes

Currently, all ATC Training Waiting Lists are ordered by list join date. Members on a list do not need to remain eligible for a training place while on the list. This means members on a waiting list who leave the network for a long period of time are returning at the top of a waiting list ahead of the members who have remained active within the division. In order to make the waiting lists fair for all members, from 21st December 2022, all members on the S2, S3 and C1 waiting lists will have
Adam Farquharson

Adam Farquharson in ATC Training

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