Day 2 RTF:

Today we finished the airspace and procedures lesson, covered primary and secondary radar and how they function (it's actually the same class that I had in initial terminal training). We also covered ACD (Arts Color Display) where I was kind of lost because I haven't had to input keyboard entries before, but we were all told that we'd have PLENTY of practice over the next 3 weeks.

After lunch we covered separation for about 3 hours. It was taken very seriously and there were a lot of questions about wake turbulence separation and visual separation. As with terminal training, the academics are dry and it's hard to stay awake, especially after lunch.

One word on the airspace: it's very generic and it's not all that hard, however, there are some goofy procedures that are built in to set the student up for errors. For example, the airspace is split into a north and south sector. When an AC is being handed off to the north sector from the south or vice versa, and the AC is landing at one of the airports in the airspace, all aircraft shall be handed off at 6000. Well, it's very easy to put two aircraft, nose to nose at the same altitude. You'll see when I mean when you learn about the airspace. All in all, it's not too hard though.