ATC Training

Whatever you are all smoking should be a controlled drug. You have massive issues with training progression, so you solve it by making people train at an additional three airfields? Mental!

3 hours ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Whatever you are all smoking should be a controlled drug. You have massive issues with training progression, so you solve it by making people train at an additional three airfields? Mental!

In recent weeks, the ATC Training Department has been criticised because we've been viewed as "not doing enough" towards the ideas of Central Training. Now we're being criticised for even daring to hold a meeting to discuss a proposal. It never ends.

One of the core aspects of Central Training is that members would train across multiple airfields in order to gain generic skills in different environments. This has been part of the proposal since it was first proposed by Adam in 2016 and is not something new.

As you will have noted from the last page of the meeting minutes, we are also working on our e-learning packages and have just begun work on our S2->S3 course, with S2->S3 arguably being one of the biggest bottlenecks in our system at the moment. This is again something that we have opened up to the membership to contribute to. As we have shown through Heathrow and OBS->S1, these courses have been useful to both encourage the member to take control of their own learning and also to ensure that by the time they reach practical training, they have a fair idea of what to expect (thus reducing the amount of work mentors have to do with regards to theory and basic principles). Mentor recruitment and retention is also a topic that will be raised tomorrow at the DSG meeting, but on that side, we recently started recruiting more experienced S1 members to conduct OBS sessions, freeing up our S2's and S3's to mentor TWR and APP.

As I have said, constructive suggestions, discussion and feedback are welcomed, which is why we have published these minutes in order to be transparent to our membership. I am regularly on Slack and Teamspeak and I would invite people to contact me there if they wish to discuss any points in greater depth or offer any thoughts. However, if your first reaction is to make a snide remark at the department and its staff, then frankly we've got better things to be getting on with than entertaining it.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Andy Ford

Hi Andy

You are incorrect in your assertion that I am criticising you discussing a proposal. I am criticising the proposal itself.

This aspect of 'central training' has never been logical given present circumstances (i.e. long waiting times) and I do not know why it was originally accepted, or why it continues to be given traction and consideration.

ATC standards are not an issue in this division (well, not for the pilots anyway, though I suspect they are part of the issue with lengthy training times!). Getting people training and most importantly the rating is. If you all continue to complicate training methods to improve training standards or, try to teach people more you will not achieve success in this area.

I know of only one other area on VATSIM that did this/does this. It was VATCAN... who ironically did all their ATC training at London before people went back to control wherever their preferred local airport was. People hated it. Back in 2010-2012, I had countless people from VATCAN I knew slagging it off as an awful system that annoyed students and slowed down progression. Have you all spoken to any people from outside of the Division who are running a decent training scheme without massive delays? If not, I thoroughly recommend it. Anywhere in the USA would be a good idea, specifically NY ARTCC or LA ARTCC. Alternatively, closer to home, Germany which is always producing excellent controllers without any remarkably long delays (to my knowledge) so why not find out what they are doing leading to their success?

Undoubtably providing an e-learning package is important and a very good thing, but regrettably this proposal, should it be taken forward and implemented, would un-do all of that good work and have un-necessary and avoidable ramifications.

If you think I am making these points to be snide or be deconstructive then you are wrong. I am making my point because I have this divisions best interests in mind. One of my functions in my day-job is advising on and implementing process efficiency for a multi-million pound business; this is a bit of free consultation for you :P.

You don't need to train at multipe airfields to develop 'generic skills'. You can learn all the skills you need at one.

Why do you think that is necessary?

11 hours ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Have you all spoken to any people from outside of the Division who are running a decent training scheme without massive delays? If not, I thoroughly recommend it. Anywhere in the USA would be a good idea, specifically NY ARTCC or LA ARTCC. Alternatively, closer to home, Germany which is always producing excellent controllers without any remarkably long delays (to my knowledge) so why not find out what they are doing leading to their success?

Do you know how many members they have joining per annum, being dumped into their training system? During my time, the UKs influx of joiners was such that anything between 5 and 11 observers would join the RTS System per day, which an average of around 4000 joining the division across a year. I don't think with that kind of demand there's a 'simple' solution to solving the training times without substantially more resources to work with. 

1 hour ago, Oliver Parker said:

You don't need to train at multipe airfields to develop 'generic skills'. You can learn all the skills you need at one.

Why do you think that is necessary?

Andy can speak for himself, but this was one of the original plans for Central Training, which I remember you bring a fan of? 

8 minutes ago, Anthony Lawrence said:

 I don't think with that kind of demand there's a 'simple' solution to solving the training times without substantially more resources to work with. 

Hi Anthony 

I agree with you. Choosing an option that went down badly in a smaller division doesnt seem like a good plan to me. Logically this suggestion is all wrong.

1 hour ago, Anthony Lawrence said:

Andy can speak for himself, but this was one of the original plans for Central Training, which I remember you bring a fan of? 

Hiya Anthony,

I absolutely am a fan of the Central Training blueprint, however at no point (to my knowledge) was it discussed/proposed that you would use different airfields to train different elements of a controllers skill set. This is not necessary. 

The idea behind the CT scheme was that you were to be taught to control based on the Part 1 not Part 2. Whereas this new proposal details that you are now selecting certain airfields for certain skills. This to me seems like a total waste of time and judging by the way the minutes are written, extra admin duties - restricting sessions available then allowing new sessions to be available. 

My understanding, and I when I spoke to Adam (a while ago) regarding CT was that you are taught to control a position, not a place. 

According to the minutes, mentors will have to be familiar with different airports and the different positions at those airports to teach. What does that mean for the students? Will they now have to become familiar with 4 different airports to complete their S3 training? This is absolutely NOT what CT was about. You were supposed to be taught to control anywhere. 

 

The proposal to train at different airfields was originally discussed back in December 2016 (Page 3):

https://vatsim.uk/download/fetch/?downloadID=00374

Just highlighting, not stating an opinion either way as can see both sides but as yet undecided...

2 minutes ago, Trevor Hannant said:

The proposal to train at different airfields was originally discussed back in December 2016 (Page 3):

https://vatsim.uk/download/fetch/?downloadID=00374

Just highlighting, not stating an opinion either way as can see both sides but as yet undecided...

That's not my point Trev, with Adam at the helm, the idea was not to train different elements at different airfields. It was generic training.

This is something else, deliberately choosing separate airfields for separate items and now requiring knowledge of a number of places.

I know Oli, just pointing out that it was discussed after Adam moved on and that's where it stems from so it's not new as in only just been proposed.  Was in reference to your first paragraph only for those who weren't aware. 

Edit:  I'll reply better tomorrow when I'm at my PC rather than on phone...

Edited January 30, 2018 by Trevor Hannant

Thank you all for your responses. I've had a bit of a crazy day today, so will endeavour to respond in full tomorrow afternoon.

 This is a hobby/game not a profession. I see no problem with learning basic skills at an appropriate airfield. This, in my opinion, makes it easier for students to gain their rating and then proceed to learn and hone their skills at other airfields is so desired. We are short of mentors and having to learn the vmats etc of numerous airfields may discourage potential mentors. Originally you only mentored on those airfields on which you had been 'validated' and became and expert on that position and able to pass on your knowledge. Does the new system mean that all mentors have to demonstrate their knowledge/capability at all the nominated airfield and if so, how would this be done - OTS, further training and would this, perhaps, put off current/new mentors. Until the S3 moodle  is in use, is this academic?

So is the proposal saying each mentor will need to be validated at a particular airport in order to mentor there? There's another bottleneck right there then. My understanding of mentoring was you were deemed good enough and responsible enough to teach - mentors shouldn't need to be checked on a particular airfield, the same we pilots aren't checked to fly into airfields either (there are exceptions, I speak generally) 

If you want to go to certain places to demonstrate certain things, then fine. But having the admin of doing so increased will only ever serve to put people off, one of the reasons I don't mentor is reading other people's styles of reports was akin to poking hot needles in my eyes. 

The original idea behind CT I thought was to have pools of places to teach at and it be more adhoc. Strip out the admin and it's fine, but this just slows down progression. 

20 hours ago, Oliver Parker said:

I absolutely am a fan of the Central Training blueprint, however at no point (to my knowledge) was it discussed/proposed that you would use different airfields to train different elements of a controllers skill set. This is not necessary. 

Hi Oliver,

I'll quote the sections of interest from the original meeting minutes for you, to see why I'm confused as to your comments and high regard for the original CT implementation.

20 hours ago, Oliver Parker said:

The idea behind the CT scheme was that you were to be taught to control based on the Part 1 not Part 2. Whereas this new proposal details that you are now selecting certain airfields for certain skills. This to me seems like a total waste of time and judging by the way the minutes are written, extra admin duties - restricting sessions available then allowing new sessions to be available. 

My understanding, and I when I spoke to Adam (a while ago) regarding CT was that you are taught to control a position, not a place. 

Quote

Students will be assigned to one of the Training Groups, and will not be assigned to a specific training aerodrome. They will make a request for a ‘generic session’ (e.g. S2_TWR), and the mentor will be able to select a position on which the session will take place.

The "proposal" discussed by Andy, and the original discussion of CT, haven't diverged based on the information documented.  The original plan for CT was to move people away from only being comfortable controlling at one airfield and actually be capable of controlling a position, wherever that is.  The proposal by Andy does exactly that by selecting the most appropriate airfield for those skills to be developed (just a more structured way, compared to the original idea of "the mentor will select an airfield").

Quote

This will afford students the ability to train on a number of different positions across their Training Group, training them for the rating rather than for the ability to control on a certain position.

--

20 hours ago, Oliver Parker said:

According to the minutes, mentors will have to be familiar with different airports and the different positions at those airports to teach. What does that mean for the students? Will they now have to become familiar with 4 different airports to complete their S3 training? This is absolutely NOT what CT was about. You were supposed to be taught to control anywhere. 

 

Again, the original CT implementation did exactly this.  It expected mentors to be familiar with the different airfields within their training group, and for their students to be comfortable switching between them.  If you look back as far as the original diagrams that Adam shared, you'll also remember that it was planned to have the examiners select the airfield the exam is conducted on.

Quote

Mentors will therefore need to have good knowledge of the positions in their respective Training Group; it is hoped that this will encourage members to control on different positions, as opposed to remaining within their RTS.

--

Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing using airfields that have the capabilities to demonstrate certain skills to teach those generic controlling skills.  I disagree that with regard to the students we've moved away from the original CT idea.  I do think there may be a bottleneck hiding in the validation of mentors, however.

Great, sure this proposal will go off without a hitch. Ignore everything I've posted in this thread as clearly it's all nonsense.

All a bit boring now and I'm tired of trying to give opinion. The usual response is it's brushed off as the staff know what they're doing so get back in your box.

Good luck. Will stick to controlling and watching the lack of mentoring sessions around me.

Edited January 31, 2018 by Oliver Parker

30 minutes ago, Oliver Parker said:

All a bit boring now and I'm tired of trying to give opinion. The usual response is it's brushed off as the staff know what they're doing so get back in your box.

I feel like most of the division probably agree with this statement, it seems that it's just "we're staff, therefore we do what we think is best" and then don't listen to the membership. Shame really, VATUK used to be quite good.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion. I feel this way, therefore I said it. It is not against ToS or CoC. Don't moderate this. Thanks.

Hi all,

Thank you for your patience, I will try to address the points in the rough order in which they appear.

On 30/01/2018 at 07:45, Callum McLoughlin said:

Alternatively, closer to home, Germany which is always producing excellent controllers without any remarkably long delays (to my knowledge) so why not find out what they are doing leading to their success?

This is not something that I believe has been a thing in the past. However, both Simon and I are keen to meet with my counterparts in VATEUD and other parts of the world to discuss training issues, share ideas and generally keep up good relations with our neighbours. I will be kicking this off soon.

On 30/01/2018 at 07:45, Callum McLoughlin said:

This aspect of 'central training' has never been logical given present circumstances (i.e. long waiting times) and I do not know why it was originally accepted, or why it continues to be given traction and consideration.

From my perspective, a proposal is just that, a proposal. Naturally, if someone thinks that they have an idea for improving the department, I want to hear it and give it an audience. Especially for a policy that has been a part of the departments end goal for a number of years, I think it's important that we discuss this (transparently, hence the minutes) and agree whether it should continue, change direction, or cease to be. Personally, it doesn't bother me too much if we decide that actually, this isn't the right thing to do right now, but I would say my duty to the membership is to consider multiple options and be transparent as to why we've elected to do what we end up doing.

21 hours ago, Oliver Parker said:

The idea behind the CT scheme was that you were to be taught to control based on the Part 1 not Part 2. Whereas this new proposal details that you are now selecting certain airfields for certain skills. This to me seems like a total waste of time and judging by the way the minutes are written, extra admin duties - restricting sessions available then allowing new sessions to be available. 

My understanding, and I when I spoke to Adam (a while ago) regarding CT was that you are taught to control a position, not a place. 

You are very correct. The core aim behind CT was and always has been to teach people to control a position, e.g. APP or TWR, rather than specifically EGCC_APP or EGKK_TWR.

I guess that this proposal offered a slight extension to that idea. The proposal recognises that certain airfields in the UK often benefit from certain kinds of traffic. For example: Gatwick is good at high workload with a fairly spacious RMA, Essex is good for tight spaces and East Midlands is good for VFR (which has been tied in due to the fact that a number of our PTD courses are based out of East Midlands).

To my knowledge, this is one of the first meetings we've had which actually considered, at a low level, how we might practically implement this part of CT. It certainly won't be the last. As we've mentioned in the meeting minutes, the proposal is currently being reviewed to consider feedback from the meeting and this forum thread and I expect it to change significantly as a result.

Ultimately, what we want to achieve is a system that sorts out our issues with training times that gets the most out of our mentors, students and staff.

6 hours ago, James Horgan said:

So is the proposal saying each mentor will need to be validated at a particular airport in order to mentor there? There's another bottleneck right there then. My understanding of mentoring was you were deemed good enough and responsible enough to teach - mentors shouldn't need to be checked on a particular airfield, the same we pilots aren't checked to fly into airfields either (there are exceptions, I speak generally) 

The current policy regarding mentoring is that a mentor (SI's / DI's excluded for obvious reasons) can mentor in one of TG1 and TG2, and optionally one of TGE, TGLL and TGNC. The original intent behind this was to avoid mentors spreading themselves too thinly, or simply flocking to just Gatwick and Manchester, for example. This is something that we are currently reviewing. OTS's for mentoring are generally at the discretion of the TGIs, though again, from my perspective, if someone is competent to mentor at TWR level, that should be the case regardless of which TG it is in. That said, for Heathrow and Shanwick, we usually do a brief OTS for new mentors at each level - again, something that can be reviewed.

Moving forward, I certainly do not intend to bring back the system of "You want to mentor at X? Time for another OTS."

6 hours ago, James Horgan said:

Strip out the admin and it's fine, but this just slows down progression.

Something that has been done a lot over the recent years and something that we are going to continue to do. The end goal is that a lot of the process can be automated by Web - for example, no availability emails and checks could be automatic so the TGMs don't have to spend hours chasing. This is difficult in the CTS as the system is now 12 years old and is reaching the end of its life. Once the CTS functionality is moved into Core, we will be beginning the process of "designing out" administrative work.

57 minutes ago, Oliver Parker said:

All a bit boring now and I'm tired of trying to give opinion. The usual response is it's brushed off as the staff know what they're doing so get back in your box.

I would like to say thank you to all that have raised their concerns in this thread. On the whole, the points have been well raised and have given us plenty to think about, so thank you. It is my intention, as I said when I was appointed into my temporary role before it became permanent, to be as transparent as possible with these developments so that people can tell us if they think we're barking up the wrong tree, hence why I expressly wanted these minutes to be published, even though I was aware that there could be a lot of negative feedback.

As policies are further developed, we will continue to inform the membership of our discussions so that people can give their thoughts and challenge what we're doing. At the end of the day, the staff are here to serve the needs of the division, so without the input of the membership, are we really fulfilling that aim?

Edited January 31, 2018 by Andy Ford

Find the UK a couple hundred mentors and then we might stand a chance. Until then you can postulate until the cows come home (I'm looking at you James Horgan, Oliver Parker and Callum McLoughlin). The staff and mentors do an amazing job with what little they have. The UK is one of, if not, the most over-subscribed Divisions in VATSIM. There is no quick and easy fix and ridiculous cries to 'cut out the management' are foolish. You need those people because of how many students and wannabes there are. In all honesty, for the level of students vs management there should be 10 more staff members if not more to manage and look after them all. This idea of multi-airfield mentoring was envisaged at the start of CT. It's introduction should hardly be a surprise and if CT was embraced the way it was intended it should have little impact on resources or outcomes. It does require mentors to embrace the concept fully too - if you can control Stansted DEL-TWR well there is no reason why after doing a short Moodle course or a bit of light reading you can't do Gatwick DEL-TWR just as competently. 

Personally speaking, I stepped down because I've had enough of this network for the time being. The pessimistic, unhelpful comments on this thread are a good example. These people (staff) aren't politicians and it's not fair to treat them like such. They're people like you and me trying to do the best they can with barely any support from above or below. It's akin to setting fire to a ship, pushing it out to sea and saying 'there you go, now fix it'. Frankly, the UK Division should have closed to new members about 3+ years ago. It's caused nothing but headaches and misery for everyone involved. I'm sorry I didn't achieve what I set out to but our hands were tied and frankly the upper VATSIM management were about as useful as a chocolate fireguard - who knows... maybe their hands were tied too!! 

As always though, having been a staff member I'll always try to support and encourage the staff and mentors who volunteer their time, whatever their motives for doing so because I understand how impossible and difficult the various jobs can be and if anything positive comes out of their time and hard work - great stuff!

That aside, catch you all on the virtual airwaves when the time comes. 

All the best!

Gents

I think that the majority of the frustration from 'outside' of the current staff circle is the re-hashing of ideas. There is a lot of deck-chair shuffling, but you're still on the proverbial Titanic. Sometimes you need to abandon ship (i.e. thought process and general training philosophy and exam scheme) and find a less leaky vessel!

My view, as it always has been, is that if you simplify training processes the time saved can be re-invested in other areas. Moving people from airfield to airfield is not a simplification, it is a complication. The students need to re-learn airfield specific information, mentors have a transient pool of students and have less ownership to see them through to the exam, students have less of a chance at having a consistent mentor (a consistent mentor is critical to efficiently and effectively developing somebody's learning) and members usually sign up to control their local airfield, so passing them from pillar to post will probably cause more drop-outs, wasting further time.

Will this fix the training issue? No it won't. There is a lot more to this problem than piddling around with making sure people get the skills they need to control at an airfield. I coped without moving training fields and so has the majority of VATSIM.

The UK is undoubtably a popular division. This makes the argument for streamlining training processes in every way possible stronger, not weaker.

This means providing better distance learning resources, I acknowledge and applaud all efforts in this area. It also means cutting down on administrative burden, re-assessing whether the current syllabus is appropriate (i.e. are you teaching too much or expecting too much, saying you comply with GRP is vague because GRP is vague in itself), providing support so mentors improve their training potential. I am not suggesting dumbing down, what I am suggesting is targeting the important things.

Why is time being wasted on insisting people memorise wake vortex categories or the precise departure separations for every circumstance? On VATSIM it's wholly un-necessary... there are plenty of other things like this which if ditched would NOT impact the experience of any pilot or controller on this network. So long as we don't have people causing others grief and/or crashing planes together and/or causing big and un-necessary delays, it is not something to be so insistent upon.

The less you have to do (to teach, to learn, to administrate), the less time it takes to do it. That is the ONLY way to solve this issue.

Until you seriously look at the syllabus, the criteria for an exam pass and the remove as many other 'things to do' other than directly training, or contributing to the training of a member, this is wasted time.

Impossible problems often have simple solutions, they just need people to think differently. I have seen largely the same thought processes year after year.

Do you need more people right now to mentor? Yes, but throwing people at this issue is not the only way to improve performance.

I am very sympathetic with staff on this network. I have been staff in some capacity since 2010. Some of you may remember I built the Pilot Training Department here and it remains largely unchanged, this included some of the very first distance learning packages for use for rating upgrades. I did my time on Region Staff, and I have done my time as a Supervisor in various capacities too. If you think I am speaking out to criticise you all, or be "unhelpful" you're totally mistaken. I am doing it in the vain hope you start to see things for the way they really are and think to look outside the box. From one person who has been in your shoes to another... a big mistake is being made here!!

If you want to discuss proposals, please please please, discuss how to simplify training processes and cut all the bureaucratic nonsense. Target the bottlenecks and difficulties. Will it fix things overnight, of course not, but it will give you a fighting chance of turning this ship around.

I'm not going to contribute to this any further because I get the impression my contributions are not valued or taken seriously. If you'd like my real world credentials, I will gladly pass them on - they include over 10 years as a professional instructor as well as a company manager responsible for the quality and efficiency of drug manufacturing processes. But of course, I am only doing this to be unhelpful ;)

Edited January 31, 2018 by Callum McLoughlin

51 minutes ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

My view, as it always has been, is that if you simplify training processes the time saved can be re-invested in other areas. Moving people from airfield to airfield is not a simplification, it is a complication. The students need to re-learn airfield specific information, mentors have a transient pool of students and have less ownership to see them through to the exam, students have less of a chance at having a consistent mentor (a consistent mentor is critical to efficiently and effectively developing somebody's learning) and members usually sign up to control their local airfield, so passing them from pillar to post will probably cause more drop-outs, wasting further time.

As I have previously acknowledged in my posts, I'm glad that you and others have raised this. And I agree with you - there are certainly ways in which Central Training could be done which would be to the detriment of the division. At the same time, I don't want to instantly discount something based on a single forum discussion, but nonetheless we will ensure that it's addressed in future plans and by no means is it my intention to hold onto something just because it's "the thing".

51 minutes ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Why is time being wasted on insisting people memorise wake vortex categories or the precise departure separations for every circumstance? On VATSIM it's wholly un-necessary... there are plenty of other things like this which if ditched would NOT impact the experience of any pilot or controller on this network. So long as we don't have people causing others grief and/or crashing planes together and/or causing big and un-necessary delays, it is not something to be so insistent upon.

From the examiners prospective, even exams don't go that far. My view on the matter is that whilst there are some things you really ought to know, because not doing so would cause you major issues (e.g. separation requirements), there are plenty of things where I would consider it acceptable standard if the student had a broad understanding and simply "knew where to look quickly". For example with Wake, I might expect them to remember a couple of the useful ones, but would certainly be happy if they could simply use a table to lookup and apply the remainder on the odd occasion that they're required.

Naturally, if I see any of what you're suggesting goes on here, we shall make sure that it's addressed.

51 minutes ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

If you think I am speaking out to criticise you all, or be "unhelpful" you're totally mistaken.

Whilst I found your original response mildly unhelpful, I hope that my responses have demonstrated that the points you have made are being noted and are something that I'll be bringing to the table at future discussions.

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Andy Ford

Thank you Andy. With reference to the first quote, please take that as a general point that in my view should be considered whilst reviewing the syllabus and exam pass guide (and test standard criteria!) for every rating. I am not solely talking about wake vortex, it was just an easy example to make. I am sure there are other criteria that could be loosened substantially with no real impact to the 'end user' but with a positive effect in training to successful exam time.

Again, without derailing the thread too much, I must insist that any feedback I am offering is not a thinly veiled dig at the difficult and time consuming work that goes into thinking this stuff through. I share Callum's opinion however that syllabii need to be streamlined. Looking through the vMATS for various airports shows an extraordinary level of detail, one that is not only difficult to replicate due to the technical nature of the network, but is also not required due to the traffic levels we experience. If the levels DO warrant something out of the ordinary (flow management, slots, co-ordination, etc) then this can be briefed or agreed amongst the controllers prior - via Moodle would be ideal. Why not have a 'when the faeces hits the fan' module?

You say we do not have enough mentors - I have said on numerous occasions that I am more than willing to mentor, however the level of detail that I am expected to teach is not commensurate with the anticipated levels of traffic I think the candidate will experience. That and the onerous levels of detail required in mentoring reports really puts me off. I understand this is something that is being addressed, so I await that process being completed. In the meantime, my offer is still open. I had my mentoring rights summarily removed from EGCC, it was only through a gentle prod to the staff concerned I discovered why. You either increase the number of mentors (by hundreds indeed!) or you reduce the burden on what is really needed to be taught.

I do not however seek to criticise individual input of staff members to try and address the problem. That is not what I am doing, nor what I feel Oliver or Callum are also doing. 

16 hours ago, James Horgan said:

 

You say we do not have enough mentors - I have said on numerous occasions that I am more than willing to mentor, however the level of detail that I am expected to teach is not commensurate with the anticipated levels of traffic I think the candidate will experience. That and the onerous levels of detail required in mentoring reports really puts me off. I understand this is something that is being addressed, so I await that process being completed. In the meantime, my offer is still open.

Perhaps the ATC Training department should be more proactive:-                       

Approach former mentors and ask why they no longer mentor, how things have changed/are changing and any support available to bring them back into the fold.

 

As someone in the S2>S3 waiting list i've had a read of this with interest. I was originally involved in CTIB when it was first implemented (I was removed from it without being told), I was also a mentor in the old Essex RTS (again I was removed without being told although i'm quite happy about that). It is all very well to have these ideas and I am all for change but there are some more core, fundamental issues that I think we need to consider.

This may have changed but there are mentors who have been "mentoring" different sets of procedures, sometimes incorrect. I was told by a TGI that I had never spoken to before (that at the time I did not know was even a TGI) that my VFR phraseology that I was teaching people was incorrect, despite it being what I was trained on when I was S1>S2, and examined to be competent with, and declared competent with in an OTS that focused on VFR Phraseology (all from different people).

CT has been around for not far short of 2 years now and while there was excellent traction with it to begin with, it feels like everything has slowed down and we're clutching at the straws that remain. Is now the time to review what the next stages are and to determine if this is the route that we want to continue to go down?

As a future S3 student, I would be happy, and like, to learn at different airfields. That said, I would not see the benefit of moving around unnecessarily just because an arbitrary decision has been made that a certain skill is to be taught at a certain AD. The biggest issue with this particular element is that it assumes that everyone will learn everything in exactly the same way, effectively. From my limited time mentoring before I was silently kicked off the mentoring team, and i'm sure everyone who was in that meeting knows this, that sure as hell isn't the case. My suggestion for this would be to get the 'student' to a level where they can provide the APP service to a minimum required standard ('satisfactory'?) on a single APP position (perhaps the one they are most likely to be examined on?). From there additional training/experience can be gained on other APP positions within the TG to further cement the knowledge and fill in the gaps that had not otherwise been able to be filled. Moving around for the sake of a box ticking exercise is not going to help anyone.

One of the concerns raised in the minutes I have to echo wholly and that is that we should not be using the ATC Training System as a means to distribute traffic around the UK or centralise it to key locations. The training system is to train people up to be able to perform those roles anywhere. If you want to distribute traffic around the UK both pilots and controllers need to be incentivised to go elsewhere. It is well known that controllers go where they think they will get traffic and pilots will go where they think they will get ATC. There are ways of achieving this goal and using the ATCTD to achieve that should not be considered one of them.

Regarding the hours requirement. I have no issues with their being an hours requirement, and I have no issue with it being required that they are not all on one position. What I would have an issue with though, is forcing people to have a minimum number of hours on each of a list of positions before being considered for training. That is open for abuse and will at best serve to reduce the quality of controlling around the country as people just go through the motions to get their hours (or log on at some insane hour of the day knowing that in a worst case scenario, they'll get one aircraft to deal with) and log on unprepared to control somewhere. I would suggest modifying this slightly to say "x number of hours across two aerodromes within the TG". This way people will have experience of more than one aerodrome, and it would serve more as something to grow the service rather than have a detrimental effect on it.

I brought this back up when I was TGI... - this is/was my way of thinking of it.

In TG2, they trained at SS/GW, CC and GP. My view was primarily Essex, with CC and GP being the 'additional aerodromes'. This was because Essex was good at actually teaching the skills of 'vectoring' (ie. speed control, making use of the RMA (or what there is of it at Essex...)), CC was 'large' so it was good with workload management and GP had a good VFR airspace structure that was 'out of the way' with CC as well as nice VFR SBAT for mentors. If anything, my perception was to delegate resources where best instead of making training more complicated. I didn't care if controllers were perfect with RMA rules when having the odd session on CC, I was making sure they knew what to prioritise and when.

Also, it is sometimes evident that people have trained and memorised an airspace structure/position they were training on. They can't adapt to different environments, and (for example) then take it out on the pilots when they go through the localiser when in fact, they couldn't vector properly because they used to just use a point on the .sct as a reference during training at one specific airport instead of a general rule of thumb. As much as we all like to see perfect APP controllers come out of the training system, it's not going to happen and the line can/will be drawn somewhere. However one thing that must be taught is the ability to be able to adapt to other positions. I had the (un)fortunate chance of going through multiple vACCs/divisions throughout the past three years and therefore, having to apply my VATSIM Germany TWR training to do BOS_TWR and then do Heathrow the next day. By using multiple airfields give people the chance to 'adapt' to different positions as well delegating different bits of training (eg. VFR) to different places. Once they're on their SAV, they can bring those skills back to the original airport. If they can't, then 'VFR' in itself hasn't been taught properly.

The hours requirement was a thought to reduce the waiting list (a bit :/) - my original proposal was to do 15 across SS and GW and 15 across GP and CC (for TG2). If it gets abused, tough because you can't guarantee traffic at Luton but it's better than nothing. It's to eliminate stuff like 'what runway is there at GW, sorry I've never controlled here before' or 'where is Sale Water Park?'