It is with pleasure that I accept a request from numerous readers of mine who have asked me to tell the story of my becoming an air traffic controller. At first sight, the answer seems to be very simple: by accident. Then, thinking long and deep about my early years the question arose: was it [&]

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The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration today announced that the Griffiss International Airport unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) test site in Rome, N.Y., is ready to conduct research vital to integrating UAS into the national airspace system (NAS). The site is the fifth of six test sites to become operational. In addition to providing [&]

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BluSky Services, established on 2003, has long been recognized as a company providing value at acceptable prices to their varied customer base spread all over the world. BluSky Services has always made sure that its portfolio of offerings is constantly updated to meet changing customer demand. They have just published their latest brochure which explains [&]

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After half a year in the other job I am in a state where a day shift in the tower is a day of celebration. With all the work there is, things have developed so that I can only spend two days per month working in the tower. This is both enough and too little [&]

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Roger-Wilco went on line five years ago, on 23 July 2009. It was not the first time that my writings appeared in print, every now and again articles were published over the years in various trade fora and they were well received. From early on my aim in writing had been in part to bring [&]

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Let the text of this NOTAM stand here as silent testimony to the abyss into which humans can descend. Shame on those who have done this outrage. Look at the crash-site photo. It is not rescue workers and accident investigators who were on the scene but guys with guns slung on their shoulders&  After this, [&]

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I can still remember vividly how the customary 20 August fireworks in Budapest meant that we had to steer everyone clear of the area& Not that there was a lot of traffic at nine in the evening, but Swissairs evening flight from Zurich did on occasion arrive to be treated to a fireworks display& from [&]

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BluSky Services has been involved in the creation of various awareness raising material aimed at preventing runway incursions. Among those, we had to recreate on film four actual events. Of course the final product involved various tricks to show what had happened in real life as there was no way to film the real thing. [&]

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The writing is probably on the wall… the days of the control tower at Ferihegy Airport are in all likelihood numbered. It future had been in doubt for a long time, one might say right from the start. The original idea, that of moving all the air traffic control units into the tower building, was [&]

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At the risk of saying the obvious, I will start by claiming that airfields were invented for the purpose of aircraft landing and taking off. The definition of an “aerodrome” used to this day by the International Civil Aviation Organization actually says so. Of course as airfields evolved to aerodromes and airports, many things changed, [&]

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Although the 4th of July is not particularly significant in most countries of the world, it is a day that has an import and far reaching significance well beyond the borders of the United States. Independence Day marks the birth of a Nation that has done more to make democracy shine than any other in [&]

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The controversy about operating UAS or Unmanned Aerial Systems in airspace also used by traditional aircraft has been raging for some time and different States have come up with different solutions, ranging from a total ban to cautious co-existence. Most experts fret however that the longer comprehensive and acceptable rule making takes to materialize, the [&]

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Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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It is now official. After 9 years of service and 230 thousand kilometers on the clock, our trusty Chrysler Grand Voyager (Town and Country in the US) is retiring. She has seen a lot of airports in Europe, some even from the inside, has carried everything from filming equipment to people to luggage… She has [&]

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Here at Roger-Wilco we have never made a secret of our considered opinion that the introduction of Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs) to get European air traffic management finally moving was a mistake of biblical proportions. All claims to the contrary, the bloody things do not work and the few results that are there would have [&]

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This story really started almost two decades ago when Lufthansa rung the alarm bells about the impending saturation of ACARS frequencies and the potential loss of revenue this would entail due to the operational hinder that would arise when aircraft would no longer be able to communicate reliably with their AOC. On the air traffic [&]

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On 16 June 2014 the Council of Ministers of the European Union adopted the extension of the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking (SJU). This decision was taken in recognition of the need to foster Research and Innovation (R&I) on Air Traffic Management (ATM) beyond the organisation’s original mandate of 2016, [&]

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You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them. Malcolm Forbes

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Those who are familiar with approach procedures feel free to skip this post… I am not going to disclose anything new ore revolutionary. However, with Performance Based Navigation (PBN) and as part of it, GPS based approach procedures become more and more common, I thought it a good idea to summarize what a Space Based [&]

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After a long and arduous battle, Don Quixote, the brave knight has finally managed to conquer the windmills! Walking on foot towards the door of the windmill he was running a mental exercise listing all the things he would be doing in there. He has been dreaming about this for years, how he will save [&]

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