Good evening,

We've had really rather a lot of discussion during my tenure so far about the capability for S1s to mentor others hoping to achieve their S1 rating. Whilst we've allowed S1s to mentor at Gatwick Ground for some time and more recently expanded this to Heathrow, there have been two key impediments that have prevented us permitting S1s to mentor others on Sweatbox:

• On average, our S1 controllers - whilst competent - represent some of the least experienced controllers on VATSIM and, thus, tend to have the least exposure to the varied traffic presentations that we might see. To that end, our position remains that on average, S1s are not typically suitably equipped to introduce others to all that VATSIM has to offer.
• There are also technical limitations. In short, the back-end servers that facilitate connections from pilot and controller clients permit people connecting to Sweatbox to elevate their rating (do not do this on the live network - you have been warned!) by one. However, for seemingly arbitrary reasons, the developer of Euroscope sought to impose an additional limitation, preventing Euroscope from making connections to Sweatbox to run a scenario - whilst they can connect to join an existing scenario.

One of our lovely Operations staff opted to reach out to Gergely, who has very kindly provided a version of Euroscope with this limitation removed. Accordingly, we now have no technical impediment preventing us from allowing S1s to mentor Observers for their rating training.

We're left with a question of competence. Through long discussions between myself, Will, Ben and the TGNC leads, we're going to invite a small number of our more active S1 Gatwick mentors to join the TGNC team as rating trainers. We recognise that this will likely stir some debate, but given the significant increase in the rate at which people join the waiting list, we must take measures to ensure that we're meeting demand. We've already invited the first three of our existing Gatwick mentoring team to join us and we'll be onboarding them as rating training mentors very shortly. I've laid clear to them my expectations and all understand that they'll need to work closely with the TGNC team, me and Will to ensure that this is a success.

Moving forwards, further invitations will be made after an initial trial period. There is a preferred pathway towards being invited and once we've evaluated the success of the programme, that pathway will be outlined in the ATC Training Handbook. For now, we anticipate that:

• Prospective S1 mentors must have held their S1 rating for a minimum for six months.
• Prospective S1 mentors must have amassed a good number of controlling hours at a variety of aerodromes post the award of their rating.
• Prospective S1 mentors must have mentored at Gatwick in advance of their consideration to begin rating mentoring.
• Prospective S1 mentors would ideally have mentored at Heathrow in advance of their consideration to begin rating mentoring.

We'll all be keeping a very close eye on this in the hope that we can make some meaningful impact to the S1 waiting list. I hope to be able to provide a further update on progress in around three months.

As ever, if there are questions or comments please let us know!

Best regards,
Adam