I got certified and now I'm an Observer/Communicator! It has been a long three months, with 11 of those weeks away from home, but it's finally over and I begin my first shift fully on my own today! I will admit I'm a little nervous to be alone in the tower, but it's also the main aspect of the job that highly appealed to me!
The title Observer/Communicator, or O/C for short, basically breaks down into our two main roles. We are observers because we do hourly weather observations, along with any special reports needed in-between the hours. This is 90% of my time spent on the job. I heard outside every hour on the hour and go to an observation point, look at the sky, determine the cloud types and coverage, check the visibility, look for precipitation or icing, anything related to aircraft safety, and then I fill out a form on a computer to upload it to the entire world!
The communicator part comes in when we finally have an aircraft arrive and I need to communicate information to the pilots. To be very clear, we are not controllers. We have no authority to control the movements of an aircraft. That's another 6-9 month course and 10x the stress level. All we do is advise and relay information. I can tell a pilot that there is a maintenance truck on the runway, but it's up to that pilot to make the decision not to land until the truck is off the runway.
One of the rougher aspects of this job is the length of a shift. 12h days are the norm. This is my first job with 12h shifts, I've been blessed by only having 8h shifts up until this point, so it's going to be quite the adjustment. 12 hours and sometimes we get zero planes for the day, so it's nothing but 12 hourly weather observations to keep you occupied.
The good part about that is I am free to watch TV/Netflix/YouTube or play some video games during the downtime! I plan on getting back into writing, reading, and programming little Arduino projects. The shift is also 7 days on, 7 days off, so I am over the moon with that layout. A whole week to get my stuff done and refresh for the next week! Score!
Overall I am very happy with the new direction my career is taking and I hope to be here for many years. I'm closing in on 40 with the back of a 60 year old, so I am done in the manual labor department, and this allows me to work without being in constant pain.
My ethical promise;
I will disclose all use of AI
The words you read are all my own.
No AI was used in this post.
