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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0236.PDF
146 FLIGHT, 8 February 1951 TRAFFIC-CONTROL UNIVERSITY How the R.A.F. Trains Service and Civil Pupils at Shawbury With a duplicate control-room built on top of the normal " office," the tower at Shawbury serves a dual purpose by providing experience for students in handling actual aircraft movements. Normal and duplicate control rooms are illustrated in their relative positions on the facing page. IN no other sphere of aviation, perhaps, does such a largemeasure of responsibility devolve upon the individualas in the now highly specialized field of air-traffic con- trol. It is a far cry from the days of the old "duty pilot," whose essential equipment consisted of a note-book, a quantity of pyrotechnics and, on occasions, an exceptional refinement in the form of a radio. To-day, the controller must be capable of handling hitherto undreamed-of traffic rates in all weathers, of coping with several emergencies at once and—the most complicating factor of all—of being able to deal with aircraft whose speeds of approach to his airfield may vary in extremes between 70 and 600 m.p.h. It is purely through a knowledge of radio and its allied radar equipment that the present-day traffic-controller is able to meet these stringent requirements. A recent visit to the R.A.F. School of Air Traffic Control at Shawbury afforded an opportunity of seeing something of the training of flying-control and airfield-control officers, chiefly for the Service. (Airfield-control officers are mainly responsible for directing aircraft before take-off and after landing.) To date, the School, which was first formed at Oxford at the beginning of the second World War and was then known as the R.A.F. Regional Control School, has trained about 4,000 students of various nationalities, includ- ing many from America, the British Commonwealth and Western Union countries. In 1941 the unit was moved to Watchfield, where, although administered by the R.A.F., it was otherwise manned by civilian staff of Air Service Train- ing, Ltd. A temporary move to Bridgnorth in 1942 was followed by a return to Watchfield. There the unit re- mained until last year, when it was combined with the Central Navigation School at Shawbury, Shropshire. Drawn for the most part from former pilots and aircrew members, the student traffic-controllers normally undergo a 12-week course. Thirty-three pupils comprise each course, two of which are run simultaneously. S/L. J. A. Jarvis, D.F.C., A.F.C., is the present CO. Although the Illustrated by " Flight" photographs. majority of pupils are members of the R.A.F., a number of trainees sponsored by the Royal Navy, Western Union and Ministry of Civil Aviation are frequently included. For the first fortnight, students spend their time in lecture rooms, gaining the basic knowledge on which to found their subsequent practical exercises. Three weeks of synthetic exercises in mock control-rooms are then followed by the third phase—of five week's duration—in which actual and synthetic operations are combined. The last week of the course is devoted to revision and examination. The primary object is that students should attain a standard which will enable them to take a solo watch at R.A.F. or civil airfields within a month of completing their training. Two squadrons of communications aircraft based at Shawbury, mainly Anson Mk 21s and Wellington T.lOs, give student controllers plenty of practical experience in handling actual traffic and, in fact, the control tower on the airfield has a duplicate controller's desk, located above the normal control room. Each student is given six hours actual flying experience during the course. From the ground, the trainee is able to direct, both by day and night, procedures such as QGH descents through cloud (i.e., descents controlled from the ground by D/F. bearings) and V.H.F. homings. Later, G.C.A. and I.L.S. training will be included in the curriculum. Special facilities are used to provide constant practice in the numerous and complex flying procedures in which the modern controller must be well versed. They include two synthetic control-rooms, an R/T. practice room, an equip- ment demonstration room (which includes a dummy airfield for practice in flare-path layout) and a radar demonstration section. Link trainers, manned by the pupils themselves, provide practice in let-down, homing and stacking pro- cedures and in the use of Babs. Voice-recording equip- ment is used to improve pupils' style of speech over the R/T. Traffic controllers must not only understand the basic principles of many of the navigational aids used in aircraft. GjC. B. J. R. Roberts (right) commands R.A.F. Station Shawbury, while St. J. A. Jarvis, D.F.C., A.F.C., is in charge of the School of Air Traffic Control. (Left) Mr. J. W. L Ha, from the Hong Kong Department of Civil Aviation, practices approach-procedure with a simulated cathode-ray D F unit.
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