Downrigger
Downrigger made its return to our operation on Thursday. I think that it will overall be a really helpful change, but there will certainly be growing pains in the interim. (If you worked on Thursday or Friday, you already know this.)
The biggest thing I would like to communicate about Downrigger: If you have questions, please let me or a supe know so that we can get you answers.
Some answers to issues that have arisen so far:
In STARS, WWF is the Downrigger West sector and WWH is the Downrigger East sector. The handoff should forward to the appropriate sector if they’re combined. If you address the handoff to W it should automatically flash to the appropriate Downrigger sector if NUW is configured correctly.
NUW Approach has been asked to call five minutes or less from activation, and they agreed to do this. (On the first two days, they often called 30 minutes ahead of time. It may take a little time for that info to get disseminated on their side, but they should be calling five minutes or less from when they’ll take the airspace.)
NUW Approach needs to ask for a reason if they want the Forks Corridor at higher than 130 (and they agreed they would start giving a reason if they ask for higher). If there is weather, I am all for letting them have higher, but in general the intent of this operation is for them to have 090-130, and then we control the airspace below and above. (Someone suggested we have them work the airspace from the surface to the top altitude, which I love. However, NUW only agreed to work it starting at 090. In future conversations, I would like to discuss having them assume the airspace to the surface because all of that low-level airspace is dead space, and it would be great to not have them call us for point outs on CLM arrivals.)
I was told we had multiple aircraft on Day 1 returning to NUW that had flown past the confines of the Forks corridor and were above 090 enter our airspace without a point out. I had Paul remind them that they’re responsible for pointing out any of those aircraft.
When the airspace times out, we reassume the airspace whether they call us or not.
Aircraft outbound to Downrigger must be routed over the appropriate fixes for you to be able to hand them off. I placed a copy of those fixes at Sector 3. All of the aircraft departing NUW for the airspace should have the necessary fix in their stereo routes. If you have an aircraft that you’re trying to hand off to Downrigger but you can’t get it to flash, check that the necessary fix is in the route. If it is, have the supe/CIC verify that flight data has run the appropriate script. I would then recommend doing a manual handoff and please let me or a supe know after the fact so that the issue gets fixed.
There have been instances of aircraft autopopping our scopes while they’re in the Olympic MOA (with Downrigger active). Airspace is working on a solution to this problem, but it may take a while because they have to do a lot of stuff under the ERAM hood to pin down the problem.
For now, you can pull up the line for the Forks corridor by selecting the Darrington button, which is less than ideal. I welcome feedback about the best way to display this going forward. I anticipate the corridor being in use often. Some have suggested we light up the corridor like we do SUA. Some have suggested we create a separate tearoff button for it (so you don’t have to see Darrington all of the time). Some have suggested adding it to the SAA page. All of those are possibilities.
Please let me know if you have a preference or a different idea for displaying the corridor on our maps.
Alternate rep
Derek Adams has been confirmed by the E-board as my alternate rep for the 2022-23 cycle. I really appreciate him being willing to help me.
Training rep and airspace rep
I would like to add an area rep for training and airspace/procedures in the near future.
The duties for the training rep would entail routinely reviewing our training paperwork and ensuring that required things — i.e., skills checks and training-team meetings — get completed. You would receive official time to do that. There was an effort made a few years ago to establish area-level training reps, but it fell away. However, we recently discussed this as an E-board and I love the idea of having someone in this role to help make sure that our training is in compliance.
The duties of the airspace rep would entail working with myself and airspace on developing new procedures for our area. This would include participating in CWGs — ie, when we redo our LOA with S46.
Please let me know if you’re interested in either of these positions.
CA-1
You didn’t think I’d get through an entire update without talking about COVID, did you? Well here we are.
This has been mentioned by myself and others, but to reiterate: In the event that you test positive for COVID, I recommend filing a CA-1 as soon as possible. To do so, you’ll need a positive test result (which obviously has been taking some people a lot of time to obtain right now). As soon as your CA-1 has been accepted, you will begin a continuation of pay — ie, you don’t have to use any of your own leave — that will backdate from the date of your positive test and continue for up to 45 days.
If you do test positive and need help with your CA-1, let me know and I will email you a step-by-step list by Stephanie Winder, who is the NATCA NNM guru for CA-1s.
In solidarity,
Dan Rasmussen
801-860-3821