January 27, 2008 by T Love.

It was a cold, wet, windy Saturday and Saturday night. Sunday late morning was beautiful. I’m exhausted therefore I’m not writing anything more about it. Very good time though.

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January 25, 2008 by T Love.

Kathy and I are meeting in Daytona Saturday for the Rolex 24. Race time is 130p. We plan on tailgating, grilling, bags, a few beers, and camping in the infield. Should be alot of fun.

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January 23, 2008 by T Love.

Back on Friday, I landed at TPA and stayed at Ma & Robs. Saturday, we departed cold Tampa - drove through a cold front - and baked in Warm and very humid PBI. While moving Sat, we sweated our you know whats off! It was 80+ with a dewpoint of 70! After spending 2 months in OKC with a light chill, it was reall nice to have shorts on, sandles, t-shirt w/out a jacket, and sunglasses.

Ma & Rob left Sunday around noon. Tuesday was my first day at PBI. Really nice laid backed people there. They really create a nice atmosphere to work in….at least it appears so. ha. I’m in classroom training for about 2 weeks before they send me upstairs to continue familarization training. The positions to learn in order are Flight Data.Clearance Delivery (FD/CD), Ground Control (GC), and Local Control (LC).

In about 2 weeks, I’ll plug in on FD/CD, listen in at times (familiarization) and other times actually talk to pilots. I have something like 25 hours max on FD/CD that I can talk to pilots before I need to check out in that position. In a day, I may talk to pilots for an hour or two. After checking out on FD/CD position, I move onto GC and train and check out within X amount of hours. And so on, and so on.

Days off: During classroom training, I have off weekends. Once upstairs, I have off Tues and Wed till June sometime. Then in July, my days off are Sat and Sun. I earn 4 hours of sick and annual leave every 2 week pay period. I also learned that I can earn upto 24 credit hours per pay period also. So if I stay one extra hour on my shift and I am doing something meaningful such as controlling traffic,  I’ll earn 1 credit hour. Of course, this has to be approved by a manager. Credit hours can be used for sick, vacation, etc. Do the math, and after one year, I could potentially have earned alot of time off.

So far, the job is going well. Learning the rules for this airport, airspace, etc is the toughest part. But, people are getting checked out in tower in about 8-10 months if not sooner. Remember, each position I check out in, I recieve about a $6,000 pay raise. Yay.

 Back to reviewing.

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January 17, 2008 by T Love.

I passed the PV. I report into work, Tueday at Palm Beach Airport.

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January 16, 2008 by T Love.

I PV on Ground Control at 830a and on Local Control at about 2p. The scenarios are 30 minutes where we work traffic in the air and on the ground at an airport simulated on about a 160 degree viewing screen. I am much calmer today than on Tuesday. A few of us from class went out for a steak dinner to celebrate early and now I am beat tired. I haven’t slept much lately and my appetite has been shot. Well, off to bed.

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January 15, 2008 by T Love.

…till we PV. Nerves are on end, loss of sleep, dreaming phraseology and scenarios…..aye

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January 10, 2008 by T Love.

Next Thursday we PV. I’m nervous. Monday and Tuesday I felt pretty good about pushing tin on LC and GC. LC is the tougher position. Wednesday was a set back. The instructor on my last LC run - I dread working with him. He doesn’t shut up. He’s the only instructor that I can say that I don’t gain anything from when we pair up. Infact, its a set back. Wednesdays problem was manageable but the 4 guys in the pattern really screwed me up and about half the class. If you are able to stay on top of it and know the correct sequence of your pattern traffic, you probably did ok on the problem.

Next week we are on Days again. yay. Monday and Tuesday we run regular senarios and on Wednesday we run a senario that is similar to the PV. The problems this week were much busier traffic wise than what the PV will be. Though there will be less traffic in the PV, the PV does cover most of the major points. This includes wake turbulence, intersection departures, crossing runway departure, getting a vehicle across the 2 runways, coordination between LC and GC, separation, execution of phraseology, and other stuff.

Well, time to get ready for class, again. Getting to bed at 130-2a every night and waking up at 12p actually sucks. In that respect, I prefer day shifts because I have more usable time.

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