This is my final night in Oklahoma after being a temporary resident for the past 4+ months. Tomorrow morning (probably not as early as I left Atlanta) I will head east again, although I will only make a little more than half the journey that I made to come out here. Friday morning I will get up bright and early to report for my first day of work at the Memphis Air Route Traffic Control Center.

My last few days at the Academy were very laid back. For once, everyone was running radar problems very relaxed and most of the talk revolved around home or for those of us moving, what our plans were to try to return to somewhat of a normal existence again. I'll actually be somewhat homeless, I'll be sleeping on an air mattress at Mitch's condo until my wife and I can move into the house that we hope to rent a week after I arrive.

I've got a whole host of pictures and stories to tell about my last month at the Academy, I kept meaning to post them but got distracted with everything leading up to the PV. Hopefully training at the Center won't have me so occupied that I can't find a few spare minutes to fill in some of the gaps on my blog.

Though I still officially have eight more days of class, the final hurdle of training at the Academy is over. This past Friday, I passed my en route PV (Performance Verification), the final practical test that determines if you proceed on to your facility. To say that I am relieved is an understatement. This has probably been the first weekend in about a month where I have actually been able to relax and not think about my career being on the line based on a single test.

To top things off, everyone in my class passed. We had one classmate fail his first run, but did his practice runs and retake throughout the other runs and passed. I suspect after he calmed down a bit more he was able to run a solid problem.

Generally, the PV is not a difficult problem. It is CHALLENGING, but anyone who has pushed themselves to do the best that they can should not have a problem with it. Compared to the problems we ran from about 30 onward, the PV was slow. Perhaps the biggest obstacle was shaking off the nerves and trying to relax as much as possible. I'll admit that I was still a bit tense, but not so much so that it kept me from keeping my head in the game.

Here's a brief rundown for any current or prospective ATC students, or anyone who is just wanting a glimpse into ATC training.

About 5 minutes before the problem starts, the evaluators come out to meet with the student they will be evaluating for the problem. Mine was Dave Blackwell, a front line supervisor at Memphis Center (Jan 2011 note: I got my first over the shoulder as a certified D-side from Dave last month, he now does most of the ongoing performance reviews controllers receive on a yearly basis). He gave me a brief run-down on his expectations and wished me luck before leading me into the lab.

Has it really been two months?

Last week marked my second month in OKC. It seems like only yesterday I was sitting in a room in the security office with everyone I'd be spending the next 4 months with chatting about where we'd come from, why we were doing this and what facilities we're headed to. Today I'm staring at a pile of flight strips covered with markings that would have seemed bizarre to me that first day.

This picture is actually one of the smaller piles. If I bothered to count them, I probably have a few hundred of these laying around my apartment today.



In my time here, I've made some good friends, and met an even larger number of people. I've got two guys in my class both going to Memphis Center, Kendrick and Mitch. Mitch was originally born in southern Georgia, but has moved all over the country with his family and the military and was living in Idaho before coming here. Kendrick originally hails from Chicago and had moved down to Memphis last year. Both are really good guys and I think both of them will do well in ATC.

Regrettably, we also lost our first classmate last week, who resigned the day we were to start non-radar labs. To most of us, it was a bit of a surprise, as he had been rather silent about some of the mental struggles he had been having trying to decide if this was what he wanted to do as a career. I wish he had stuck with it for a little while longer, as he seemed to have the aptitude to learn the job. However, this is one career that you've definately got to have your heart into as well, or it will just eat you alive. Even in the short period of time I've been in non-radar, this has become very evident. In any event, I wish him well in whatever endeavor he chooses to pursue.

My impressions of the Academy have overall been positive. Basics, like I had been told, was largely a review for a pilot such as myself. Some did struggle a bit at first, but I think most of it was probably people having to shift back into an academic mode. Everyone ended up passing the final and our class average was around 96-97% if I recall correctly.

After basics, we got to spend a day and a half at CAMI (Civil Aero Medical Institute, these are the folks who process pilot's medicals) which is just a few buildings down from where we were at, taking various personality tests and a couple of the sections of the AT-SAT again. We were told that these tests would be used to tweak the AT-SAT and their selection criteria for the psychological exam that is part of the employment screening process. As we were told our first day there, most people working ATC are a bit "off". Evidently they had been rejecting a higher than normal number of applicants when they started using a new type of psych test a few years back, only to find out that students currently at the academy and controllers in the field pretty much tested out very much the same.

En Route training has had its ups and downs so far. Academics has not been that difficult, the rules used in non radar are not too hard to grasp conceptually, but actually applying them is where the true challenge has been. Some problems in the lab go well, others you just get your butt kicked. For me, my biggest challenge has been containing my frustration about my performance when something is pointed out to me and all of a sudden becomes oh-so obvious. Trying to take 20-30 strips of paper and trying to maintain an image in your mind of what is happening over and around a particular fix is a daunting task and I don't think there is anyone who makes it through there without having their ego and confidence bruised at least a couple of times. I think success in this program is largely determined how well you overcome that adversity and just press on.

This post started off as "A Week in OKC" but I got put on night shift a few days after I started that post and haven't done much more than go to class and sleep since.

Anyway, here's a summary of the festivities...

I got here on the 16th around noon, after a rather gloomy drive over here. It rained overnight while I was in Little Rock, enough so that the thunder and lightning actually woke me up early that morning. It remained cloudy for most of the day between there and OKC. I found my way to my apartment with no problem, unpacked most of my stuff, and gave my brother a call who is staying in nearby Muskogee, OK. He shows up about 5 hours later after he gets done with work and we go out and enjoy some wings and beer, and try to catch up on things. I hadn't seen him since Christmas so it was a nice visit. He spent the night here, Sunday morning we grab some grub at a local Waffle House and then go tour the Oklahoma City Memorial. Once I figure out how to get my pictures off of my iPhone without wiping them out (hey Apple, ever thought of allowing people to drag and drop off of this thing!?! I've already had one synch wipe out most of the apps I had installed on here!) I'll post the ones I took.

First day at the Academy everyone starts out all hyped up and excited, and leaves a little underwhelmed. Not that everyone isn't still excited about the job, but in summary it is just a day of filling out more forms and then getting the same speeches about benefts and workplace behavior that you get almost anywhere you work these days. Oh, and you get told not to look at pornography on the government computers about a dozen times by just about everyone who walks into the room.

I'm not going to give a day by day run-down on Basics because it would be pretty pointless. In short, it is how the FAA crams all of the aviation terminology and concepts down everyone's throat in 5 weeks that someone is likely to encounter in ATC. As a pilot, almost all of this is nothing I haven't been exposed to or tested on before. In fact, some of the test questions were almost taken verbatim from the instrument written test. My only real gripe about it is that they spend far too much time on certain subjects, like airport markings and lighting. For example, they spent almost 4 hours on that subject, when a private pilot ground school may take up about an hour to cover the same subject. I realize that this is new material for most in these classes, but they could shrink some of this stuff down as to not bore everyone to death in the meantime.

Socially, the guys/gals I'm in class with have been a good bunch to hang out with and have made my time here significantly more bearable. Though most of our time has been spent together in study sessions or just BSing after class, we've found some down time to go enjoy some good BBQ, catch a movie (Star Trek was awesome), or enjoy a late night breakfast at Waffle House after class. Mitch, Kevin, Hsaing (pronounced "shang"), and occasionally Matt and Keef have been my partners in crime for study sessions or just to hang out. I'm trying to interact with some of the other folks a bit more, but with them all living about 20 minutes NW of here, it limits our ability to just pick up the phone and walk over there on a moment's notice.

Gotta run to the store now and pick up some stuff before class...night classes are just soo much fun!

So my journey to the FAA academy has begun. I made it out to Little Rock today, and tomorrow I will drive the last ~340 miles to my home away from home for four months.

I woke up at 5am today, tossed the last few things in the car (laptop and camera) and kissed my wife goodbye and was out the door by 5:30. I said a short prayer, then wished Georgia goodbye for at least the next 4 months, assuming the house doesn't sell while I'm away.

There was a little more traffic than I was expecting getting to I-20, but nowhere near what it would be like in another couple of hours. As light as traffic was, I was able to do 75-80 mph just about the entire way to Leeds, AL, where I stopped for a Chick-Fil-A biscuit (yummy!) Because of the time change, the time on the clock there was a scant 45 minutes after I left (6:10am CDT) but in fact I had been driving for about an hour and a half at that point.

Birmingham came and went, and before I knew it, I was in Mississippi. I fueled up just east of Tupelo, then took a reprieve from interstate driving to do a little railfanning. This has been another one of my hobbies for the last 8 years or so, although I have become a bit disolusioned with the Class 1 (classification for our country's largest railroads) operations, and specifically seeked out two smaller shortlines, the Mississippi Tennesee Railroad and the Mississippi Central. This actually worked out well, because had I just driven on to Memphis, I would have probably have gotten there at close to 10 local time. When I got to Memphis, I ran into a traffic jam, caused by, ironically enough, a 18 wheeler hauling railroad car axles. The first few had not been secured very well and had shifted, striking the rear of the cab and one ended up in the middle of the road. To avoid the traffic, I took a small detour that took me by Memphis Center, where I will be after I finish the academy.

So I ended up at my intermediate destination, Jim Neely's Interstate Barbeque right around noon, and sat down to a plate of delicious chopped pork. I think I am still full from that lunch, nearly 9 hours later!

My original plan was to stay the night in Memphis, but it was only about 1 pm local time, and I was still in the mood to drive, so I decided to head to Little Rock, AR to help shorten tomorrow's drive. While Arkansas is every bit as flat as I thought it was (I only encountered one real hill in 120 miles) it isn't as bleak as I had envisioned it. What was neat were watching the crop dusters in full force! I saw no fewer than 4 Air Tractors and Thrush aerial applicators (as they are properly called) swooping around applying fertilizers and pesticides to the numerous farms alongside I-40. I caught one taking off from Carlisle Municipal, about 25 miles to the east of here, and making a quick turn to the left, swooping over the interstate maybe a scant 50' above my car. Pretty neat!

Well, that's today's trip...let's see what the rest of the drive is like tomorrow.

This past Friday marked my last day at Eclipsys, I had worked there for just shy of two years, after being laid off from two jobs within the span of 8 months. It was nice to be steadily employed and to work with some pretty good folks, but I'm glad I'm finished there.

This time next week, I'll be in Oklahoma City, just a few hours away from starting my job with the FAA.