An account of my C1 (Controller) exam
That was an interesting evening! On Friday 25th February I sat my VATSIM controller exam. This tests the ability to work an Approach controller's position, dealing with all the arrivals to (and some departures from) the local airports. In my case the position is Essex Radar, covering Stansted and Luton Airports.
Approach control is a bit like three dimensional chess, but with the added challenge that some of the "pieces" have minds of their own! I'm not even sure whether the description below has everything in the right order, but it can be considered an artist's impression :-)
The evening started easily enough with a gentle flow of arriving traffic from both the east and the west. Even a change of runway twice at Stansted as the winds picked up wasn't too much of a problem, and it finally settled down to runway 05, while Luton stayed on 08 throughout. Then things started to get a bit more complicated. A couple of inexperienced pilots were having trouble flying the ABBOT hold, one wanting vectors, and one disappearing somewhere to the north in the direction of RAF Marham, at the same time as several VFR pilots wanted joining instructions for Stansted while still at Southend. As I started to sequence the arrivals on the downwind leg for the very tight turn onto the ILS for runway 05 I was aware of KNT544 arriving via Abbot and not yet having called me. Little did I know what was to happen next (though knowing the pilot of KNT544 I should have guessed).
As I organised a neat little row of three aircraft for the ILS another light aircraft called for a zone transit, and got told to stay outside controlled airspace because by this time it was getting busy. I got them onto the ILS, including a text only pilot who seemed to have to be told everything twice, but had to chase the light aircraft back out of CAS as he'd almost orbited onto the final approach path. At last I managed to talk to KNT544 , who had flown on past ABBOT without instruction and was now NW of Stansted still at FL80. A hurried instruction to descend and turn on the downwind heading, and I had space to deal with the zone transit.
With 4 aircraft all in the same couple of square miles southwest of Stansted, it happened! "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. KNT544 has lost the no. 1 engine, and I mean it has fallen off the wing" (at least that's what I think he said!). Events become rather confused in my mind here, as I tried to get everything else out of the way.
G-BILL just establishing on the ILS was told to go around, but discovered he didn't have enough fuel. I wasn't sure if that was another exam set-up, but apparently it wasn't and he kindly disconnected rather than stress me out even further. One aircraft ended up holding well into Luton airspace (sorry, Luton Director), and at this point I discovered that the zone transit aircraft and I had different understandings of where he was going.
Having notified everyone who needed to know of the emergency and got the zone transit safely out of the way, I then realised I'd forgotten to give KNT544 further descent so he was too high for the ILS. So it was through the ILS to establish from the other side, but he ended up very close in, and I was so relieved when he accepted my offer of a visual approach. Somehow he managed to get his plane down on the ground in one piece - excellent airmanship, Mr Blackburn, sir!
Retrieving various holding aircraft after that seemed comparatively simple. Somewhere in the middle of it all I'd also had several VFR flights wanting RIS or FIS to Luton. They didn't get much of service because of the Mayday; I can see why real world controllers often transfer the non-emergency traffic to another frequency. I also had a northbound Military pilot who rather got left to his own devices as he headed over my airspace to Wattisham. Technically I didn't think he should have been mine anyway as he was at FL120 when he was handed off - I think LON_CTR did that on purpose.
My brain was spinning so much I missed the examiner's first text message to say I could finish. On receipt of his second message my relief was palpable. The debrief wasn't too long, and at last I heard the magic words "yes, you've passed". I can't actually remember much else of what the examiner said; I think he realised as I did that that wasn't one of my better evenings controlling.
It was a fascinating evening and I learnt a lot just from the sheer workload and challenge. I'll post later with some of the points I think are worth noting.
My thanks in particular to Ben Hunwicks (my examiner), the three Chris's who mentored me (Dobison, Norman and Yates), and to Chris Yates and Martin Leat for nagging me to sit the thing in the first place. And to all the supporting controllers and pilots for their work on the night. And that even includes KNT544 :-)
Onwards and upwards!
Approach control is a bit like three dimensional chess, but with the added challenge that some of the "pieces" have minds of their own! I'm not even sure whether the description below has everything in the right order, but it can be considered an artist's impression :-)
The evening started easily enough with a gentle flow of arriving traffic from both the east and the west. Even a change of runway twice at Stansted as the winds picked up wasn't too much of a problem, and it finally settled down to runway 05, while Luton stayed on 08 throughout. Then things started to get a bit more complicated. A couple of inexperienced pilots were having trouble flying the ABBOT hold, one wanting vectors, and one disappearing somewhere to the north in the direction of RAF Marham, at the same time as several VFR pilots wanted joining instructions for Stansted while still at Southend. As I started to sequence the arrivals on the downwind leg for the very tight turn onto the ILS for runway 05 I was aware of KNT544 arriving via Abbot and not yet having called me. Little did I know what was to happen next (though knowing the pilot of KNT544 I should have guessed).
As I organised a neat little row of three aircraft for the ILS another light aircraft called for a zone transit, and got told to stay outside controlled airspace because by this time it was getting busy. I got them onto the ILS, including a text only pilot who seemed to have to be told everything twice, but had to chase the light aircraft back out of CAS as he'd almost orbited onto the final approach path. At last I managed to talk to KNT544 , who had flown on past ABBOT without instruction and was now NW of Stansted still at FL80. A hurried instruction to descend and turn on the downwind heading, and I had space to deal with the zone transit.
With 4 aircraft all in the same couple of square miles southwest of Stansted, it happened! "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. KNT544 has lost the no. 1 engine, and I mean it has fallen off the wing" (at least that's what I think he said!). Events become rather confused in my mind here, as I tried to get everything else out of the way.
G-BILL just establishing on the ILS was told to go around, but discovered he didn't have enough fuel. I wasn't sure if that was another exam set-up, but apparently it wasn't and he kindly disconnected rather than stress me out even further. One aircraft ended up holding well into Luton airspace (sorry, Luton Director), and at this point I discovered that the zone transit aircraft and I had different understandings of where he was going.
Having notified everyone who needed to know of the emergency and got the zone transit safely out of the way, I then realised I'd forgotten to give KNT544 further descent so he was too high for the ILS. So it was through the ILS to establish from the other side, but he ended up very close in, and I was so relieved when he accepted my offer of a visual approach. Somehow he managed to get his plane down on the ground in one piece - excellent airmanship, Mr Blackburn, sir!
Retrieving various holding aircraft after that seemed comparatively simple. Somewhere in the middle of it all I'd also had several VFR flights wanting RIS or FIS to Luton. They didn't get much of service because of the Mayday; I can see why real world controllers often transfer the non-emergency traffic to another frequency. I also had a northbound Military pilot who rather got left to his own devices as he headed over my airspace to Wattisham. Technically I didn't think he should have been mine anyway as he was at FL120 when he was handed off - I think LON_CTR did that on purpose.
My brain was spinning so much I missed the examiner's first text message to say I could finish. On receipt of his second message my relief was palpable. The debrief wasn't too long, and at last I heard the magic words "yes, you've passed". I can't actually remember much else of what the examiner said; I think he realised as I did that that wasn't one of my better evenings controlling.
It was a fascinating evening and I learnt a lot just from the sheer workload and challenge. I'll post later with some of the points I think are worth noting.
My thanks in particular to Ben Hunwicks (my examiner), the three Chris's who mentored me (Dobison, Norman and Yates), and to Chris Yates and Martin Leat for nagging me to sit the thing in the first place. And to all the supporting controllers and pilots for their work on the night. And that even includes KNT544 :-)
Onwards and upwards!
posted by RuthMcT at
2:50 pm
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