Well, this was certainly a long week, albeit only four days of simulation.

Right from the start, the runs were rather…mediocre, at best, with only a few better ones in between.
Only on Wednesday, I start to break the spell, with most runs not done great, but at least well enough. A minor exception could be seen in the fact that I have a confliction, i.e. two airplanes coming too close, in the last run.

A pack of airplanes separated by a hair horizontally and 1000ft vertically? Descend the upper one and 1 mile horizontally / 200ft vertically should be the expected result. Tested and proven correctly (how to save such a run: quick information to both airplanes and evasion instructions – i.e. tell the lower one to descend, the upper one to stop descend, preferably immediately).

Finally, today, the breakthrough, using two older runs to warm up with some lower traffic levels, then three current runs with more airplanes. Suddenly, everything works again, with enough capacity to leave the standards and try some new things every now and then.

The highlights:
A Gulfstream 5 offers an “able” when asked if she can climb at 5000 feet per minute until Flight Level 220 (indicating how great an airplane it is when compared to the more common ~2000 feet per minute to that level normal jets can do)

The pilot of a small airplane has an equipment (transponder) failure and has to divert, initially offering its intention to land at Langen (a very busy international airport where it is difficult to fit small airplanes into the flow).
Informed that “Egelsbach is cheaper”, the pilot gladly re-thinks her intentions and decides to land at this small (but well equipped) airfield, saving the pilot 200 Euros in landing fees and the controller (yours truly) quite a bit of effort. :)