Official curriculum: "Introduction to Radar Control, Real Time Interactive Simulator (RTIS) training, radar vectoring, March Terminal airspace, control services, departure clearances and estimates, identification, initial contact, radar separation, hand-offs, communication and control transfers famvir."

What it's really about: Departures.

Ahhh... you've been at NCTI about a month now arimidex. You've survived the rigours of the ITA. You scan the horizon with a knowing eye after passing met. And you've completed the mod 1 "price of admission" exam. You're ready to hit the simulator!

The first simulator you start off with is called the RTIS, for Real Time Interactive Simulator. Some people pronounce the acronym by saying each letter seperately, like R-T-I-S. Others pronounce it "are-tiss." Either way, RTIS is a lot like your first car: exciting because now you can drive, but in retrospect one heck of a lemon.

Two students sit side by side. The student in the controller position will look at his screen and give commands based on what he sees going on. The student in the "feeder" position will interpret these commands and type them into the console. The feeder will roleplay the pilot, the tower controller, and controller's in the adjacent sectors of airspace. The two computers are networked together, so when the feeder types in commands on his computer, it changes the path of aircraft on the controllers computer.

In this first block you'll immediately start to notice the different styles that each instructor has. Some might handle a given procedure differently from what you learned in class, or from how another instructor showed you. This is extra frustrating in the first few blocks because you're not used to it.

At the end of the block, you'll do your first progress check (often referred to as a "PC"). On my first PC, I vectored (i.e. turned) an aircraft while it was below the minimum vectoring altitude (MVA). When I realized my mistake, I was angry at myself. After all, we had been told that if we vector aircraft below the MVA, it was a loss of separation, and any loss of separation counts as an automatic fail. (You may be asking: a loss of separation with what? The answer: between the aircraft and the ground!) As soon as I realized what I had done, I corrected the mistake immediately by telling the aircraft not to turn. A lot of the pressure was off now - I wasn't worried about failing the exercise anymore because I thought I had already failed it. When the instructor stopped the exercise five minutes before it was actually supposed to end, that only confirmed my belief that I had failed the run. (A "run" is a single exercise in the simulator, usually about 45 minutes long.)

The first thing to know is that you won't get sent home if you fail a PC. PC's are used for two purposes: it gives the instructors a rough idea of how the class is doing, and they prepare you for the evals. (An "eval" is a must-pass evaluation of your simulator abilities.) Although you will get a mark on a PC, really it is a pass/fail situation. Furthermore, it is my understanding that only a pass/fail grade is passed onto the regional schools when you leave NCTI.

That busted MVA that I was so worried about? Instead of a ten point deduction in the separation column and an automatic fail, it was reduced to a minor five point deduction because I fixed the mistake immediately after it occurred. That taught me an important lesson: always, always, always, ALWAYS try to save separation. This was a recurring theme throughout my whole time at NCTI. One guy, from another course, was CT'd during his Block 6 eval. He had a loss of separation, casually looked at his instructor and said, "Well, I guess that's game over, huh?" Even though some instructors may use the video game analogy to talk about ATC, deep down they don't want students to think of ATC as a game. What they really want is to see evidence a student will fight like hell to prevent two aircraft from running together. Anything less is unacceptable, which is why that particular student deserved to be CT'd.

And when the instructor stopped my first PC early? It turns out he thought I was doing a good job, and didn't see any point in running things right to the end. This can save your bacon sometimes: if you're doing a run and it seems to be going longer than it should, odds are you have missed something. Your instructor is now waiting to see what will happen next. Maybe you've forgotten to tell an aircraft to contact the next sector, and the instructor wants to see if you catch the mistake before the aircraft crosses the sector boundary. Likewise, sometimes an instructor will stop a run early, but will ask if there is anything else you would like to do. Instead of saying, "Nope, I'm all done, ho hum...", scan your radar and data board because you might catch something you've missed.

By the end of Block 1 you're probably thinking, what a weird airport, airplanes take off all the time but they never land. But by practising a skill in isolation you strengthen it.

Next up: arrivals.