Visit to Atlanta ATC Centers
Posted: December 5th, 2009, 7:13 pmHi all,
Another "not really robotics related, but really cool technological" post. Perhaps I should rename this section to "General"
Today I visited the Atlanta Center and TRACON "Terminal Radar Control Facility" buildings. To put it simply, TRACON manages all arrival and departures of planes to major airports (mainly Hartsfield), while Center manages all the other planes flying around in the entire South Easy US who want to be "in the loop" of what's going on.
It's really all quite neat. Since they're quite important facilities, they (the buildings) are surrounded by barb wire and you have to do an entire security check kind of thing.
The ATL Center building is really quite neat, spite being quite old (it was built in the 1970's or 1980's). We saw the set ups where upon all the new guys practice with fake planes. The set ups there look practically the same as the ones in the live floor does. Its interesting that when they practice with fake planes as not only do they have it (the practice system) on a separate network so that planes don't accidentally "cross over" to the live system, they add a plus sign to the fake planes callsigns so if one happens to "pop" over, they can recognize it. When we went on the floor (I'm not really sure what it is called, but where all the stuff is live with real controllers and real planes), it is really dark. Not like "omg, I can't see dark", but like "ok - this is dark" dark. Yeah? Anywho, the place is surrounded by monitors with planes moving around and charts for the controllers to reference their assigned area. There are six areas of which they monitor, and they are like the big giant SE part of the United States - SC, GA, AL, and a bit of FL I think. The controllers who work have at least three monitors, one with the big scope display (seriously, you could use these as a TV they are so big - like 50in diagonally or something), another with a overview of a area or something above the scope, and a touch screen display off to the side for information such as frequencies or procedures. There are several controllers (like around 5-8 or so) who are monitored by one manager guy, and then everyone is monitored by another big guy. Its all very complicated. They also have a Meteorologist from the National Weather Service so they can plan to route planes around a storm or something that is moving in. 'Course the entire facility has a battery backup and 5 very large locomotive generators. Once the power goes out, the batteries can hold the load for a rated 30-45 seconds (though they can truly hold it all for 1.5 hours), and then the load gets switched over to the generators. Once all the generators are running, they burn around 8 gallons a minute. Both the generators and battery array are very large. The battery array was like a row/set of around 20 by 40 batteries, then two rows make a column. And then around 3-5 columns make all the batteries. Yeah, lots of batteries, power in the 100-200 kW range. Exciting. [can't think of anything else about Center]
The TRACON was just as cool as Center (no offense to the Center guys). The TRACON was newer, and looked a whole lot cooler. The room is probably a bit darker than Center, but it seriously looks like something in a Sci-Fi movie. I can't find a picture of the layout, but it's a bunch of computers in a circle (the controllers) with the big guys in the middle with the system operators. The layout of the controller's screens basically looked like this, but a whole lot darker. It's really neat as they are three set of controllers (divide the circle into three, and that's how it looks): Arrivals, Departures, and something else. It's so neat, cause with their systems they can get so accurate as planes are lining up to land. Like, it is just so cool - I could spend an entire day in there.
A interesting thing is that when a controller messes up, either by letting planes get too close (either 3 or 5 mile separation) or something else, they get a deal. I don't know why they call it that, I asked - they don't know, but it's not a very good mark on their report. If you get three deals, you're fired. Simple, eh?
We were going to go to the Hartsfield tower, get a tour of that (and walk on the catwalk outside), but our tour guide got sick and the tower staff we're already short and busy. I think we have a raincheck planned. At least, I hope so.
Overall, it was a really fun day and I learned a lot. Our two tour guides we're really helpful, informative, and funny. They were also controllers at Center. They say everyone there is really like that and is willing to help pilots, who have the belief that they (Center and TRACON) are really scary to talk to, but all you have to do is ask. One important thing I learned is that, there are about 3 billion acronyms used by the FAA, and our tour guides didn't really know what all of them meant (and it doesn't help the actual words are like SAT words).
[Can't think of anything else].
More info on TRACON here (or Google it).
-Tanner
Another "not really robotics related, but really cool technological" post. Perhaps I should rename this section to "General"
Today I visited the Atlanta Center and TRACON "Terminal Radar Control Facility" buildings. To put it simply, TRACON manages all arrival and departures of planes to major airports (mainly Hartsfield), while Center manages all the other planes flying around in the entire South Easy US who want to be "in the loop" of what's going on.
It's really all quite neat. Since they're quite important facilities, they (the buildings) are surrounded by barb wire and you have to do an entire security check kind of thing.
The ATL Center building is really quite neat, spite being quite old (it was built in the 1970's or 1980's). We saw the set ups where upon all the new guys practice with fake planes. The set ups there look practically the same as the ones in the live floor does. Its interesting that when they practice with fake planes as not only do they have it (the practice system) on a separate network so that planes don't accidentally "cross over" to the live system, they add a plus sign to the fake planes callsigns so if one happens to "pop" over, they can recognize it. When we went on the floor (I'm not really sure what it is called, but where all the stuff is live with real controllers and real planes), it is really dark. Not like "omg, I can't see dark", but like "ok - this is dark" dark. Yeah? Anywho, the place is surrounded by monitors with planes moving around and charts for the controllers to reference their assigned area. There are six areas of which they monitor, and they are like the big giant SE part of the United States - SC, GA, AL, and a bit of FL I think. The controllers who work have at least three monitors, one with the big scope display (seriously, you could use these as a TV they are so big - like 50in diagonally or something), another with a overview of a area or something above the scope, and a touch screen display off to the side for information such as frequencies or procedures. There are several controllers (like around 5-8 or so) who are monitored by one manager guy, and then everyone is monitored by another big guy. Its all very complicated. They also have a Meteorologist from the National Weather Service so they can plan to route planes around a storm or something that is moving in. 'Course the entire facility has a battery backup and 5 very large locomotive generators. Once the power goes out, the batteries can hold the load for a rated 30-45 seconds (though they can truly hold it all for 1.5 hours), and then the load gets switched over to the generators. Once all the generators are running, they burn around 8 gallons a minute. Both the generators and battery array are very large. The battery array was like a row/set of around 20 by 40 batteries, then two rows make a column. And then around 3-5 columns make all the batteries. Yeah, lots of batteries, power in the 100-200 kW range. Exciting. [can't think of anything else about Center]
The TRACON was just as cool as Center (no offense to the Center guys). The TRACON was newer, and looked a whole lot cooler. The room is probably a bit darker than Center, but it seriously looks like something in a Sci-Fi movie. I can't find a picture of the layout, but it's a bunch of computers in a circle (the controllers) with the big guys in the middle with the system operators. The layout of the controller's screens basically looked like this, but a whole lot darker. It's really neat as they are three set of controllers (divide the circle into three, and that's how it looks): Arrivals, Departures, and something else. It's so neat, cause with their systems they can get so accurate as planes are lining up to land. Like, it is just so cool - I could spend an entire day in there.
A interesting thing is that when a controller messes up, either by letting planes get too close (either 3 or 5 mile separation) or something else, they get a deal. I don't know why they call it that, I asked - they don't know, but it's not a very good mark on their report. If you get three deals, you're fired. Simple, eh?
We were going to go to the Hartsfield tower, get a tour of that (and walk on the catwalk outside), but our tour guide got sick and the tower staff we're already short and busy. I think we have a raincheck planned. At least, I hope so.
Overall, it was a really fun day and I learned a lot. Our two tour guides we're really helpful, informative, and funny. They were also controllers at Center. They say everyone there is really like that and is willing to help pilots, who have the belief that they (Center and TRACON) are really scary to talk to, but all you have to do is ask. One important thing I learned is that, there are about 3 billion acronyms used by the FAA, and our tour guides didn't really know what all of them meant (and it doesn't help the actual words are like SAT words).
[Can't think of anything else].
More info on TRACON here (or Google it).
-Tanner