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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0075.PDF
58 FLIGHT International, 9 January 1964 ATC instruction: a class at the School of Air Traffic Control, Bournemouth (Hum). Airport, carrying out an exercise Instruction in radar controlling at Hum A class in progress in one of the lecture-rooms in the new Air Traffic Control School building at Hum RESPONSIBILITY—AND ITS REWARDS . . . limited section of the population. What training does his status involve ? Most of the senior men in the UK Air Traffic Control service have grown up with the job. They were either in ATC before the war or entered it during the war or immediately afterwards, when civil traffic was much lighter and slower and before radar control of aircraft was exercised. There is a total of approximately 900 men (the number of women ATC officers is so far negligible) in the UK Air Traffic Control Services; and the big problem is how to keep up both the numbers and the standard of skill in the face of a kind of two-way stretch—retirement and resignations, and a con- stant expansion of services. The Chief Air Traffic Control Officer, Mr C. A. M. Kyrke-Smith, points out that from 1972 onwards the number of people retiring from the ATC service will steadily increase, reaching a peak in the early 80s; so steps will have to be taken to ensure adequate numbers to cover losses through retirements. To maintain present control and radar facilities, to allow for an extension of services (notably in the upper airspace sphere and with the introduction of Eurocontrol procedures) and to counteract retirements and resignations by age or for health reasons, our ATC services must recruit 100 new mem- bers a year and these recruits must be able to satisfy the training standards. Training is done at the School of Air Traffic Control, Bourne- mouth (Hum) Airport, where there are two main types of student— entrants aged 23 to 35 (or up to 40 if they have had aircrew and ATCO experience), and cadets aged 18 to 23. For the older en- trants, initial training lasts ten or 11 weeks; they then go out to special stations for three months, then undergo advanced training at an operational unit. Cadet training lasts four years (the scheme began in 1961, so no end-product can be expected until 1965): it is very thorough, covering not only aerodrome but approach, area and radar control, plus practical experience of flying—both as a pilot (up to PPL standard) and familiarization and flight simulator experience with an airline. This training, like that for direct en- trants as Grade III ATC officers, consists of both simulated and real control experience. Basis of Instruction To provide simulated experience, the school has facilities which approximate as closely as possible to the real thing; and when the recently completed building in the south-east corner of Hurn Air- port is fully in use, all these facilities can be deployed to maximum effect. Hitherto, separate wooden huts have housed different aspects of the syllabus—radar training, airways training, approach control. Most of this training is completely synthetic. As one of the in- structors put it, the school's intention is "not to use aeroplanes until you get a really worthwhile use from them." A Link Trainer is used to demonstrate approach procedures, so that students can see a flight path traced out by the "crab" on the Perspex table-top. "The basis of instruction," it is emphasized, "is to present the problem visually." Training exercises for embryo controllers are worked out in great detail and performed with minute-by-minute scrupulousness. Not for one moment is a student allowed to lose count of the time (however synthetic it may be for exercise pur- poses). One advantage of the new building is that bigger-scale exercises can be planned and executed. On the upper floor, flanking a long corridor, are the aerodrome and approach room and the radar room. These rooms have a false floor, so that the electric and elec- tronic cables leading to the basement can be taken up, to permit re- positioning of equipment as required (the number of cabling per- mutations is almost infinite). This flexibility of space and facilities means that different phases of training can be linked up if necessary; it means, too, as one of the instructors put it: "Now we are going to go in for practical training in a big way." Around the upper floor of the new building are lecture rooms, and the variety of activities being carried on in them when I visited the school illustrates the scope of training at Hurn: a plotting exer- cise was being done by six students under the eye of an instructor; in a conference-room nearby there was a discussion group on radar; in another room, a lecturer was speaking on "ATC into the 70s"; in another, 17 students—three of them from Switzerland—were being instructed on area control. (The Swiss are only one of many nationalities who have been through the school, as the impressive rows of badges in the hall of the new building bear witness. Since 1948, up to the end of 1962, nearly a thousand overseas students have attended.) It is small werider that the Superintendent, Mr R. F. Bulstrode, is proud of his establishment and its new accommodation. As he puts it, "In the old buildings, one had to persuade people that the teaching was worthwhile . . ."—implying that with space and flexibility, plus the school's reputation, such persuasion is not now necessary. When the direct entrants, and (in due time) the cadets, have completed their theoretical and practical training, they become Grade III air traffic control officers, and so enter the base of the pyramidal ATC structure. A Ministry of Aviation pamphlet, Air Traffic Control, describes their work in these terms:—
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