Team Change

Rumours of my untimely demise are greatly exaggerated… *cough*

After almost a year without an update, it’s time to say hello again to the remaining souls still visiting this place every other day.
Unfortunately, while I have learned a lot during the last year, progress in my training hasn’t been as smooth as one would hope. Thus, as an incentive to change for the better, I have now been assigned a different team (from 7 to 4).

For those not familiar, Air Traffic Control is shift work done by teams which rotate throughout the, well, shifts. At our place (and I think throughout DFS), those are eight. What makes changing them so interesting to a slower-than-expected (and demanded) ATC student is the fact that these teams all work somewhat different from each other. So if you haven’t been too successful adapting to the style of one team, another might fit you much better and finally yield the wished and hoped for results.

So that’s the situation I’m in now – a new team, two (well, de facto three) new coaches, a new working style and, err, “could you kindly get done within the next two or three months”. The bumpy start is that during the first shift, I have to play sick (no really, got the Doctor’s paper!). But starting next Monday, it’s on to a new (and probably last) chance.

What else is new? Primarily, a fiancée living with me, with all the associated things like knowing all local furniture dealers by heart (part of the reason this blog stayed silent for so long).
Besides that, the decision to use a new style for this blog, ditching the aforementioned Linux experience for Windows 7 (still on XP or Vista? If you can, move on), adding a few new blogs to the sidebar in case you get bored by this one, and comments activated for those who wish to express their feelings or ask for a way to send those donations in (fiancée needs a birthday present! ;).

I try to update again a bit more often, wish me luck. :)

Something New

Since August 2006, I have been in training to become an Air Traffic Controller with the German air navigation service provider, DFS.

By now, I have pretty much left theory behind, we (our course of 16) are now in a stage where we are mostly trying to keep airplanes apart from each other in the simulator, during so-called “runs”.

Having thought about this for quite some time now, I will now try to tell a few of the stories we experience here during and surrounding our training.

In between I will still try to add a few links I find interesting, in the hope that someone else might find them interesting, too. :)

I just noticed that tomorrow is scheduled to be quite a workload-heavy day, so with some luck, an interesting post may result – unless I am too tired then.