Vectoring and Radar Tracking

troopernflight

troopernflight

Well-Known Member
How exactly to you go about advising an aircraft of a particular vector in order to point them towards an airport or a fix? I'm guessing you can draw some kind of line electronically on the radar scope and it gives you the heading? Also, say I happen to "tweek" my heading a little so as to go towards the initial fix before be cleared to do so (not that I ever do that ;-), I know you can see this change in heading. How can you tell that we made such a minute heading change? I'm curious as to how you use the radar scope to do these things.
 
Speaking in reference to terminal radar.

New STARS and ACD scopes have a function that allows you to click on point a and point b and it'll give you the exact track and distance. In practice, that function gets little use. Most vectors are educated guesses based on angles, experience and current winds.

Again speaking to newer terminal radar scopes we have a function called *P which ads a cone in the front of the target. The cone will point to the heading from the previous radar sweep and can be between 2 and 29 miles long. Its not perfect, but after a few sweeps you can easily tell who is using the auto pilot and who is a little rusty. Radar return history trails can also be used, but they are better for establishing more of an average heading rather than a two or three degree "tweek".
 
It's both similar and different in the enroute world. As for how we determine a vector, we have a function that lets us take our cursor and click on any two points and it will give us a heading from the first to the second. It's not corrected for wind or anything, so we still have to guess a little, but it will give us an idea. Or, we can just guess, especially if we know your current heading. A third option is just to tell you to turn x number of degrees left or right from your current course.

For tweaking your heading, we can run out a line that shows up to 8 minutes straight ahead of your current heading, and if it isn't pointed directly at whatever you are supposed to be pointed at, we know. And some controllers will NOT be happy about it (I've heard pilots get their ass reamed multiple times over this), others won't care too much, as long as you didn't put yourself into a conflict with anyone else because of it. Just ask for it, unless there's a good reason not to, most controllers (that I know of) will give it to you no problem, then you won't have to worry about it. Of course, it all depends on the controller, and more so, how busy the airport you are heading to is. I assume you are talking about a smaller, not very busy place.
 
In addition to mentally picturing where certain headings will take an aircraft (some are better at this than others, and it can improve with practice) you can also compare desired aircraft tracks with known lines or markings on the radar map itself. If you have runway final lines displayed, you know exactly what heading those lines represent, so if you wanted an aircraft to parallel that heading you'd know which vector to issue. Sector boundary lines can be a good guide as well, there is a lot of information on the scope to assist in vectoring. The more you're able to do it mentally, the better off, because it does take some time to use the tools mentioned above and that gets harder the busier you get.
 
The aptitude for picturing this kind of spacial awareness, is what makes someone capable of being a controller in the first place. Like many parts of the job, you kind of just "get it"
 
Also, the art of vectoring usually consists of a few Things learned along the way

"Crap, that didn't work, turn right another 30!!"
 
queeno said:
i could always tell the weak sisters from the good controller by how they used those little toys on the radar display, the more crap they had cluttering up the display the weaker the controller.
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Also, in my experience...

Poor controllers always think it's crazy busy.

Good Controllers it's never busy enough.
 
ATC RET 2003 said:
Americans can be weird, too. But I think you already know that. ;)
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Personally miss when the 'muricans used to use nicknames instead of initials

The old guard was fun to work with

"you ok with this guy at FL370?"

"I got raadaar over here, I don't care if he's upside down"

"ahh roger, so that's approved then thanks"
 
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