Days 2 & 3

Day 2:
Today was the first "real" day of class. The class is called "Air Traffic Basics." Contrary to what you might expect, we didn't even meet our instructors until today. All the instructors are the academy are contractors from Raytheon, and their job is to only teach us the materials for class. The FAA employees are the people who gave us the day 1 briefings & HR material etc. The FAA also administers our tests at the end of each block (as a way to insure that the contractors aren't slipping us the answers to make them look better). We have 2 instructors for the class, who are both retired Military controllers. There is a very intereseting contrast between class here versus classes in college. What I mean by that is that the instructors here are all extremely passionate about ATC/Aviation, and it seems that they all still want to be controlling aircraft if they could. In college, I found that most of the times, professors taught courses only as a way to allow them to do their own research etc. (educating was their 2nd priority).

We started with introductions, followed by a pre-test for the course (as a base of comparison when we finish the course). Apparently, the average for the pretest is usually around 40%, although I think I did better! Once we finished the pretest, we started Unit 1: the NAS (National Airspace System). This unit was a basic overview of how the FAA is organized, from Headquarters in DC, down to each of the facilities.

We learned about the 2 primary types of facilities: Terminal & En Route. Terminal facilities are further subdivided into Control Towers (ATCT) and TRACONS (Terminal Radar Approach Control). Control Towers handle ground traffic at the airports, as well as clearing aircraft for takeoff and landing.
Once aircraft takeoff, they are handed over to the Approach/Departure Control (TRACON). This happens to be the type of facility I'm going to. The TRACON will control the aircraft until it has left the airport area and reaches (close to) cruising altitude.
(this is an actual stock photo of the facility I'm going to)

From there, the aircraft is handed off to the En Route facility, known as a Center (ARTCC= Air Route Traffic Control Center). There are ~23 centers accross the country that handle traffic over huge areas of space, usually at high altitudes. The closest center to MD is the Washington Center, located in Leesburg VA. Once the airplane is within ~ 100 miles of its destination, they will normally decend into the TRACON's airspace again, and will be vectored/controlled until they are on final approach, when they are handed off to the tower again (usually within 5-7 miles).

In addition to the Terminal and En Route facilities, there are also Flight Service Stations (FSS), which provide weather & airport advisory information to pilots, both in flight & on the ground. They will also be the the first ones to initiate search and rescue missions for missing aircraft. The difference between FSS and other ATC facilities is that the FSS does not have any direct control authority over aircraft.

Day 3:

Today we finished the lesson on the NAS, and had our end of lesson test. These test grades are not recorded, they are mainly just for our own study purposes (I got a 100%).

Then we began the next lesson, which was focused on Airports. We learned about runway markings, airport signage, and airport lighting. This was a fairly simple lesson that we finished early in the day (another 100%). Because we are on the government's time, we can't leave any earlier than 5 minutes early, otherwise it would be considered "Fraud, waste, & abuse." But if we finish the lesson early, the time is pretty much our's to use as long as we're in class. We spent the last 20 mins of class with our instructor watching some pretty sweet aviation video clips!

Time for the weekend!