ATIS Trade needs a School and Strong Leadership

[Telecom_Dirt]

Hi

Here is a concept for consideration:

he ATIS Trade is and has been severely misunderstood for too long now...

Cheers & Long Live one of the Greatest Trades.

Sgt Dukey   

 

[Eye In The Sky]

Misunderstood by.....

who?

What suggestions do you have for revamping the trade?  I''ve heard rumours about POET beiing taken over by AF C & E Trng in Winnipeg, the course moved to 8 Wing and the 3's being run out of there too.  A friend of mine just finished the 3s, is posted and they don't know if he is even doing the old QL5 OJT package, or doing the new QL3 OJT and taking the upcoming QL5 course.  The new guys coming in must be thinking (well maybe not the off-the-street ones, but the remusters) wtf is going on when they can't even sort out the OJT package issue.  Someone make a effin' decision!  ;D

 

[Telecom_Dirt]

Ok, Eye In The Sky

I'll promise not to be too dramatic. Pardon me if I just let it out in points.

The reasons are of my own point of view and complicated.

The ATIS trade suffers from a huge Identity Crisis, even within her own ranks.

ATIS Identity or Brotherhood (Sisterhood) cannot hold a patch to branches like REME or the Beavers.

What a tragedy! The ATIS Trade is full of awesome experiences and challenges.

First off, Clinton was blown away and the Air-Force Radar and Comm Techs (still a new trade historically) had to run down to

Kingston and hook up with the Signals gang....Zowee..was that a significant event? You bet it was.

Now...these Signals folks are truly a hardy bunch and God Love them but they are not one of the five core Army Vocations.

And when a group of professionals know deep down that they are black sheep, what do they do? Well they go out and prove

that they are indeed worthy and they overachieve. So in essence, our Signals folks are more #$*$# army then the Army.

Our Jimmies are the best!

All of these characteristics applied to a bunch of even blacker sheep, ain't good. Trying to understand Radar and Comm services

in an AirForce environment just does not happen by people who are engulfed in perfecting their Army vitality.

In general, the  whole Army Airforce Navy thing causes problems when defining ATIS Techs. They are a purple trade but people like to

categorize and you can't get away from it. So I think that we should show some loyalty to the element that requires ATIS

Techs. That would be the Air Force. Get our Techs away from Kingston. Give them a school that can foster a fraternity and

understanding (And don't make it Trenton. Trenton is trying to do everything ATIS and doesn't have the infratsucture).

Maybe that would spawn off some genuine leadership at the higher level. I'm sorry but I just see a huge disconnect and I could

probably right a book on it.


I would send the ATIS TQ3ers to Kingston for Poet, Borden for HRS and the new school for TQ3s, TQ5s, TQ6, and TQ7.

That way they would see (and appreciate) a bunch of stuff and get a bit of variance in their training experience.

I would put the new School in North Bay. Why..because that's the top of ATIS Food Chain. North Bay has the whole country as

an Airfield.

Over

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I am wondering if some of this is not already starting, with the Army Sig's going to the Super MOC concept, and the Blue C & E world nicely saying no thanks, and what one of the QL3 courses was told recently about moving POET to the AF C & E world with that and the 3s being moved to (possibly) 8 Wing.  I don't know much about the current CM but apparantly the gentleman he replaced was not well liked and wasn't the 'strong hand' you are talking about ATIS is in need of. 

Maybe the AF needs to do what the Navy did (split the NET world back into 3 streams).  Will that happen?  Not likely, all though all the old timers I have talked to think it should.  But the vastness of the trade is pretty big IMO.  Having said that, currently ATIS is sitting better in relation to PML levels that some other Blue NCM trades like AVN. 

What I find that makes me scratch my head is how a guy can spend say, 4 years in Nav Aids on quad or something and then get posted somewhere like Borden to the RadMaint shop.  There goes alot of quad knowledge, someone else comes in from IT or Voice Services to Nav Aids, someone who doesn't know Voice Services goes there and you have lots of tech's scratching their heads for a while.  I have thought for awhile that the MOC would be better split into 3 streams, doing the opposite of what the Army Sigs world is doing. 

 

[Bert]

Splitting the ATIS trade make some sense from one perspective as airfield, IT, rad, and tel functions
seem distinct streams. 

From another perspective, skill sets amoungst those functions are fairly similar.  A cable plant
links radars, radios, phones, and computers.  A tech of each function needs to know a sub-set of
another.  If tasked or deployed, the tech may be "it" for a number of things.  Given the integration
of many systems, separating the trade into distinct streams doesn't appear practical.