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Old 06-21-2013, 01:21 AM   #2
shannoneliz
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All of the aviation ratings actually go to NAS Pensacola. Corry Station has the CTs and such. AC A school's difficult with a very high dropout rate. If you're not good at studying or memorizing things quickly, you'll have a hard time. The first block is all academic. They start teaching you the 7110.65 (atc manual, you could start taking look at it now but you really won't understand anything) and give you something like 10 tests in 8 weeks. If you aren't constantly in the books, it's very easy to fail a test in this portion. And to warn you, it's reeeally dry stuff. Just expect not to have a life. I think to date, only one class (my class started out with 14) has made it all the way through this block with all the original members (if you fail a test and fail a retake, they'll usually set you back, if you fail a second or third, you'll probably be kicked out of the school).

The second block is three weeks. They spend a week teaching you the basics of tower and then stick you in a tower simulator for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, you'll be tested on local, ground, and flight data - local is the most failed portion here. The third block is six weeks, I believe, and it's all about radar. You'll take your last written test (and the hardest, in my opinion), then you'll do 3 radar sims (ASR, PAR, and Arrival). Usually, if you make it through block 2, you'll graduate, but I did know a couple people who got kicked out on the last test (arrival) right before graduation.

Your day starts out pretty early. You'll PT in the morning before class at 0530 two or three times a week for an hour. They'll give you a bit of time to shower/eat breakfast afterwards, then you meet up with the other ACs and march up to the schoolhouse. Class starts a little after 8. You get about an hour for lunch (when I first got there, they let us march to the galley with your class, but people got in trouble and they made us go with the whole scholhouse after that). I don't remember what time we got out (maybe 4?), but I know we were pretty much always the last school to finish and we never got out early on Fridays like most everyone else.

AC is a difficult rate. It can be very stressful, very intense. If you're not good under pressure, it's not the job for you. It can get very boring when you're on position and there's absolutely no traffic. There are about a zillion rules you have to follow and you're expected to know them off the top of your head - a lot of the time, you don't have time to look stuff up. If you make a mistake, you can kill somebody and even go to jail. That being said, it can be a lot of fun and it's suuch an adrenaline rush when you handle a lot of traffic successfully.

A good atc resource is stuckmic.com

Also this is worth a read: https://www.facebook.com/notes/david...50167724793049
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