A trip to the doctor

I had the first part of my class 3 medical yesterday, part of the requirement of the ATC job.

There are three types of aviation medical in Australia. The class one is for professional pilots, those that fly for airlines, charter companies, ag pilots, etc. The class two is for private pilots and those learning to fly. I used to have one of those, but it expired about five years ago, since I haven't flown a plane for years and couldn't see the point of renewing it. The class three is for ATCs.

Anyway, the medical was in the city. I don't go into the city very often these days since I left my old job over three years ago. Boy am I glad I don't work in the city anymore.

The medical involved filling out pages and pages of questions on a form and then a few tests by a nurse. I swear the form filling took longer than the actual examination by the doctor. I did the usual reading of the eye chart, had my blood pressure taken, got weighed and measured, and had to do a colour vision test. All stuff most people have probably done heaps of times throughout their lives. There was a hearing test where I sat with a set of headphones on and pressed a button each time I heard a beep. I could also hear the air-conditioning and the occasional car door slamming, which meant the test conditions weren't exactly ideal.

The one test that I'd never had done before was an ECG. I'd expected this to be a stress test on a treadmill or exercise bike, but all I had to do was lay down and have sensors stuck to me. Now, I have a fairly hairy chest. The nurse put the first two sensors on my chest, then decided there was too much hair and she was going to have to get the clippers out. So she ripped the first two off. I nearly jumped off the table, something that isn't easy to do when you're lying down. I now have a weird looking chest with bald patches between the nipples.

Another test that isn't part of the class 3, but is a requirement of the job was a drug and alcohol test. This, as you can imagine, is simply a case of peeing in a jar. There are different reagents in the jar that test for different drugs, like cocaine and marijuana. I learnt long ago not to go for a pee just before having a medical. You end up standing in the gents for a hell of a long time if you do. Trust me, I've made the same mistake twice before, but not recently.

The rest of the medical was fairly straight forward. The doctor checked my eyes, listened to my lungs, made sure all my joints were working, etc. Then she gave me a referral for blood tests and an ophthamological exam. The blood tests are to check my blood sugar and cholesterol levels. The eye test is a bit more involved, to the point I won't be able to drive after it, so Donna will have to go with me. I've had the same test done before a few years ago, and it's not pleasant.

Once all that's done and I have my certificate from CASA that'll be the final hurdle. It'll then just be a case of packing up and moving to Melbourne.

ATC the journey

I thought I'd give you a quick run down on what's involved in getting an ATC job here in Australia.

Back in July, I put in my initial application via the Airservices Australia website. About three weeks after that, I got an email inviting me to do an online test. This was a bit like an IQ test, it involved recognising groups of numbers and letters, mental arithmetic against the clock, and some written comprehension stuff. I wasn't sure I'd done all that well with numbers and letters thing, but three weeks later I got another email congratulating me and inviting me to book a time for a phone interview.

Well, the day of the phone interview came around, it was booked for 3PM. 3PM came around and no call. 3.10PM came around and still no call. By about twenty past I was starting to get a little worried and was typing up an email to find out if anything was wrong. I'd already checked my resume to make sure they had the right number. Then the phone rang. It turned out the building in Canberra that the HR person who called me worked in had been evacuated. False alarm.

Again, I didn't think I'd done all that well. Some of my answers were a bit feeble. The next morning though I had another email, this one was inviting me to a day of interviews and assessments. A whole day.

If you get this far you're doing well. Someone on my assessment day said that they had around 1800 applicants originally. They only get 6 people in for each assessment and they had 3 days of assessment in Brisbane that week.

So, on the third week of September, I rocked up at Brisbane Centre, right next to the control tower at Brisbane Airport. I'd been there the week before and taken a wrong turn, ending up at the domestic terminal. I did it again this day as well, but still got there in time.

The six of us introduced ourselves and sat around chatting before the assessments started. It turned out I wasn't the only one that had taken a wrong turn on the way. The good thing about this kind of selection is that we weren't competing against each other. If we were all suitable for the position we'd all get in, so in a way, it would be in our interests to work together.

We were then introduced to the assessors, some were HR people and the others were experienced ATCs, then we were each given a timetable for the day.

My assessment started with a couple of computer based tests, including a rerun of the one I'd done at home, to make sure I could do it under different conditions and also to make sure I hadn't got someone else to do the test at home.

Then I had a bit of a break in the lunch room, after which I went upstairs and did the simulation exercise, with one assessor giving me instructions and scenarios that I had to deal with and the other taking notes. Then it was back to the lunch room.

Then came the group exercise, to see how we worked as a team. We must have worked pretty well together, since we apparently got a lot further through it than most groups.

Next was a one on one interview. This was a behavioural interview in the STAR format. Basically it's situation or task, action, result. I was asked about different situations, what actions I'd taken and the result of those actions. Stuff like, give me an example where you provided good customer service. Really easy to do when you work in a supermarket.

The last bit was a briefing exercise. Basically I was given some paperwork with information on it, given 20 minutes to prepare, then I had to do a 10 minute presentation.

If my descriptions are a bit vague, that's because we were asked at the beginning not to divulge too much of the assessment process, lest we give other applicants an unfair advantage. I know some applicants don't listen to that and tell others what goes on. I suspect it's more the unsuccessful applicants that do that though. Kind of a case of sour grapes.

Anyway, at the end of the day I was told I should hear something in about 4 weeks. Well 4 weeks came and went, I hadn't heard from my referees to say they'd been contacted, which would have been a sure sign I was a contender. Then on Wednesday my mobile rang while I was at work. When I got home I checked my messages and the missed call was from Airservices Australia. I rang back, but because of daylight savings down south, my call went unanswered.

I emailed my old boss the next morning to see if he'd been contacted. Before he got back to me, I got confirmation that I was in. Then my old boss replied saying, "I meant to let you know..." It turns out he'd been contacted by, not only Airservices, but also the Bureau of Meteorology. So it seems I might get an offer there as well.

So there you go. It took about 4 months from my initial application to getting an offer. I've heard of people having to wait 18 months, so I'm pretty lucky that they've streamlined the recruitment process.

All things going well, I should have an office with a view in around 18 months.

The right stuff

Remember my recent post about an office with a view?

Well, it seems that several people involved in recruiting at Airservices Australia believe I have what it takes to become an air traffic controller, because this morning I got offered a job. I start on the tower course in May next year.

This means I'll be spending most of next year living in Melbourne, we'll be moving down there just as it's starting to get cold in May. Once I finish the academy training, I'll get posted to a tower somewhere in Australia (we have 28 towers around Oz) for on the job training, then I'll be a fully fledged ATC. I could be the person, when you go on holiday, that lets you land at which ever airport I end up working at. I could even conceivably be the person that gives permission to land to all sorts of royalty, presidents, etc, even John Travolta who flies his own 707 and often comes down under.

Not that I'm going to let the power go to my head. I could end up here.

The balloon has gone up

I'm not actually sure what that phrase means, I think it has something to do with a situation getting serious. In my case, it has to do with watching a weather balloon being launched at Brisbane airport this morning.

As well as my application to become an air traffic controller, I also have an application in to become a meteorology observer. I have an interview coming up soon, so this morning I went out to the met station at Brisbane airport to see what the observers do.

Around 9am every morning (and again at 9pm) they send up a weather balloon with a radiosonde attached. The radiosonde transmits temperature and humidity data, and the balloon is tracked by radar to get the wind speed and direction at different altitudes. At 3am and 3pm, smaller balloons are sent up without the radiosonde, just to get the wind data.



Above is the balloon ready to be remotely inflated with hydrogen. The reflector is just alfoil stuck to styrofoam and the radiosonde hangs underneath.



If you look closely, you can see the radiosonde hanging below the balloon. It ascends at around 1000ft per minute, so it disappears from view pretty quickly. The radar tracks it automatically until the balloon bursts at around 35000 ft or higher.



The round building above is where the balloon is inflated and released from. The warning light with the yellow sign flashes when the balloon is being inflated, because the hydrogen in the balloon is so flammable. The observers ring the control tower to let them know they're about to launch, but at night the guys in the tower can see the light flashing and already know why they're ringing.



Observations are taken regularly using the gear shown in the photo above. There's stuff there to measure soil temperatures, evaporation rates, air temperature and humidity, cloud heights, horizontal visibility and even a glass ball that burns a piece of paper to measure the amount of sunlight per day. The white thing about a quarter in from the left of the pic is a laser that measures the cloud height.



The round thing above is what they use to measure evaporation rates. It's covered in mesh, probably to stop frogs breeding in it, and they top it up each day to see how much it had evaporated. The thing near the bottom left corner of the pic has five thermometers in it to measure soil temperature at different depths. The thing to the left of the evaporation tank (or pond) is the glass ball that measures the daily sunlight.



Everyone has probably seen the white boxes that hold thermometers, there's one in the middle of the above pic. There's also a couple of rain gauges there. The brown thing near the middle of the pic is actually a museum piece that used to measure rainfall rates on a rotating paper chart.

If I end up getting a job with the bureau, I'll be trained how to use all this gear, and could be doing the job anywhere in Australia, that includes Australia's Antarctic stations, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. Or I could end up working at Brisbane airport.

Fingers crossed, the interview is on the 24th.

An office with a view

How would you like to work in an office with a view like the one below?



That's the view from the tower at Brisbane International Airport, looking west toward the city. I used to work in the city, and all I could see out my window was the walls of other buildings. It's not hard to guess where I went for a visit today.

A couple of months ago, I applied for a job as a trainee air traffic controller. I've gone through the online test stage and the phone interview, and next week I have a full day of interviews and other assessments. If I'm successful there, I'll have a full year of training in Melbourne ahead of me, before returning to Brisbane to finish off my training as an enroute controller. Today I paid the control centre a visit to get an idea of what's involved in the job.

I could explain what goes on at Brisbane Centre, but the Air Services Australia website does a better job of that.

Even though I'm applying as an enroute controller, I still got to spend about an hour up in the tower, and what a view.



Above is the view across Moreton Bay out toward Moreton Island with a couple of Virgin Blue 737s.



The domestic terminal. The international terminal is to the right of the tower.



Off in the distance, behind the refinery, is Wellington Point, where I sometimes paddle the kayak. The big sandy bit is on North Stradbroke Island.



Port of Brisbane, where both my brother and my step-son-in-law work.



SMC, or surface movement control. This is the guy that tells the aircraft where to go while they're still on the ground. To the right of him is a co-ordinator, and to the right of him is the aerodrome controller, the guy that tells aircraft where to go when they're in the air, when they aren't talking to departures or arrivals. I say guys, there are women that do these jobs too, it's just that none were in the tower while I was there.



If you were on an Air New Guinea flight departing Brisbane around 11am today, this is your plane.

If you're ever offered the chance to visit a control tower, I'd highly recommend it, even if it's just a little regional airport. If you're considering working in ATC, then you'd be mad not to organise a visit if you live close enough. In the three hours I was at the airport I had the chance to chat to about nine different people about their jobs. You just don't get that sort of information from chatting to someone on an aviation forum.

I'll keep you posted on my progress through the selection process, however, it may take some time.

New boat

I've got a new boat.

Well, almost. It's not quite finished yet, but I should hopefully be paddling it by next weekend. but this is what I've been doing for the past month or so.



It's based on the traditional Greenland kayak design, what the Inuits built from driftwood and seal skins, except this one was built from materials I got from the local hardware store and a guy in the states.

The frame is made from Western Red Cedar, that I got from a local supplier, and Tasmanian oak and pine from Bunnings (the local hardware). The skin is ballistic nylon, the stuff they used to make bullet proof vests out of, I got that from a guy in the states that teaches people how to make traditional kayaks, or if you prefer, Qajaqs.

A couple of people have suggested to me that it would be easier to buy one. I've spent a bit under $500 in materials, and almost 80 hours labour so far. To buy a commercially made kayak, with the same performance, custom made to fit me, that I can lift with one hand and put on the roof rack of our Subaru, would cost probably four or five thousand dollars. Even taking into account the time I've spent building it, I'm ahead. And I have a few people that have been following the build asking me where can they place their orders.

It's been probably the most rewarding learning experience I've ever had, and I compare that to my university studies. It's combined learning new skills, planning the different stages of the project, overcoming problems, and getting back to basics. There are no nails or screws on the kayak, it's all held together with dowels and lashing, the same way kayaks have been made for thousands of years.

Anyway, the finished item won't be the same colour as in the pic above, I dyed it this morning, and it'll be given a few coats of poly-urethane (not really traditional) to make it waterproof, but I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I built it myself, and there are several other people that want me to build them one too.

Oh, and if you're used to paddling plastic kayaks, as I am, this one will weigh under 15kg when it's finished, that's for a 16 foot kayak. I'm used to lugging a 33kg kayak onto our roof rack. I can lift the Greenlander up with one hand and carry it on my shoulder.

If you're interested in the building process, I've been blogging about it here.

Home made tools

The mixer tap in our kitchen has been leaking a bit just lately, so I finally got around to pulling it apart today to find out what size cartridge we need to fix it.

I've never fixed a mixer tap before, and when I went to pull it apart, I discovered the biggest spanner I had, at 1 inch, wasn't big enough. So I went down stairs, grabbed a couple of off cuts from the boat I'm building, and a bit of rope, and made a pipe wrench. It worked surprisingly well.



I was a bit disappointed that Donna didn't jump up and down and say how clever I was, but I guess she's just so used to my genius, that it wasn't any surprise to her.

If you're knew to this blog, the above is sarcasm, the bit about genius is anyway. I thought I was clever.