"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
"Chip Jones" wrote:
[snipped]

To be fair, the clearance as issued was a little funky. If the intent
was to have the flight fly the PT, I would expect the clearance to sound
like:

"Army 569, seven miles northeast of MINES, cross MINES at 5000 inbound,
cleared VOR/DME Runway 22 approach Rockwood, report procedure turn
inbound."


Roy, I agree with your phraseology here. Trainee and I tried to discuss
phraseology before he issued the clearance, but we were busy and had a lot
of irons in the fire. One of our problems is that the MINES fix does not
exist on the radar scope- it's not adapted into the ATC computer database.
For the controller, the fix must be interpolated by eyeballing the paper
approach plate, eyeballing the radar scope, and guess-timating about where
MINES really is in space. Because of the computer limitations, the correct
"Seven miles northeast of MINES" phraseology is virtually impossible to come
up with unless ATC is slow enough to make several low priority computer
entries using the slewball/trackball (like a mouse pointer) to pinpoint the
whereabouts of MINES and then the aircraft's relationship to it.

In the event, my guy had his hands full on the other freq and he had his ATC
computer slewball engaged in higher priority duties. I have been hammering
him for weeks about making precise location calls to aircraft, especially on
instrument approaches. Due to his lack of experience with the radar map
display, he can be wildly off when he makes a position call reference a fix.
You may be 15 miles from XXX, and he might tell you "Five miles from XXX,
cleared blah blah blah." Or you could be ten miles out and he tells you "20
miles from XXX, cleared blah blah blah." If I were the pilot on an IAP,
I'd have some serious questions about a ten mile difference in what I showed
to be my position and where ATC just told me I was. In the case of my
trainee, ATC would be wrong quite often, simply because ATC was just tossing
out a figure based on an inexperienced glance at the scope. Because of his
tendency, I have been forcing this developmental to engage his computer
slewball and to make certain involved computer entries to get a fairly
precise position fix before he makes the position call. In the case of
MINES, he couldn't do it easily (quickly) so he used the distance from the
airport instead.

As for the "Report procedure turn inbound", my misunderstanding of this
approach probably led the trainee down the primrose path. The trainee asked
me about the course reversal and I said "I'm not sure...but don't you think
we'd better get higher on that Delta before he smokes the RJ out in front of
him?!?" In other words, I was looking at a higher priority duty when the
question came up. We never got back to the question. The trainee, who is
aggressive, likely said to himself "I'm done asking questions, I need to get
this Army cleared in now and move on. We can discuss the semantics in the
coffee shop later." I believe the trainee knew about the PT but since I
didn't jump on it when he asked me the question, he left the "Report PT" out
of his clearance.

Regards,

Chip, ZTL