Tabletops/3D came and went in their reserved 6 days. For the most part I did well. Local position was always the one to give the most trouble, as expected, but no one died on my watch at least. I did seem to have at least one deal on each go at local, in different areas of course. By the end of the tabletops/3D days while I was ready to pass the skill check with flying colors, I certainly wasn't ready for a PV.
Thankfully the PV is still a ways off. On the Tuesday following our 6 days in tabletops we took the CTO (Control Tower Operator) exam. I passed that with a 97%. We spent the rest of that day and most of Wednesday getting ourselves accustomed to the Fishbowl simulators, pictured below.
The fishbowls, named for the feeling that you are trapped within a fishbowl, are nearly fully computer controlled. Meaning, the computer gives the pilots voices and trys its best to listen to what you say and respond properly. It doesn't always work, which is why we have a ghost pilot in the back monitoring the system. Wednesday evening we did our one and only IFR scenario, which proved to be rather simple. Thursday and Friday were our first two days on the full day long scenario runs, 40 minutes each, 7 a day. In the sims, concepts like Expected Departure Clearance Times, Low Level Wind Shear Alerts, SIGMET forecasts, and so on, are left out and instead more traffic is added in for us to work. The purpose being to teach us to properly seperate traffic even when under traffic loads. The effect this has is that after two days I feel like I'm getting my butt thouroughly kicked on local. They say that around scenario's 4 or 5 people start to just "get it". Hopefully that will be case with me because as of now I feel about 2 minutes behind everything, and this stupid cough/cold I developed is making it hard to talk all day long to planes.
This weekend I left for Wichita after work on Friday to spend the weekend with an old college roomate. While I can attest that the food I had over the weekend was good, the nightlife of Wichita was rather lacking. Mostly because Wichita is a damn sausage fest, girls seem to be far and few between. Never-the-less, I had an enjoyable time and returned home this afternoon.
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