The room
After 23:00 the night belongs to one controller.
Marrandee Approach works out of a fibro annex behind the tower — one console, a kettle, and a hundred and twenty miles of radar reaching over the salt lakes. The day shift signs off at eleven and leaves you the freight out of Perth, the Auralis red-eye, mine-charter Conquests coming home from the Goldfields, and — some nights — Lifeflight, which outranks everything on the frequency including your break.
The scope paints once every four seconds. Between sweeps, the traffic keeps moving and you hold the picture in your head. That gap — the four seconds you can't see — is the whole job.
Procedure
How to work traffic
-
Vector
Press on a radar return and drag. The line you draw is the route they fly — pilots follow it turn for turn at standard rate. Draw again any time to amend.
-
Speed
Select a strip and assign 160 to 240 knots. Sequencing is done with knots, not miracles — slow the leader, run the follower, and the gaps build themselves.
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The gate
Deliver them onto the runway 27 centreline inside twelve miles, within about thirty-five degrees of the runway heading, at 190 knots or less. They'll call established; the scope does the rest. The tape remembers everything.
Separation
is sacred.
Three miles between anyone. Five behind a heavy. Six if you're a Conquest tucked in behind the Straitline 744 — the air remembers longer than you'd think.
Wake turbulence
The air remembers.
A 744 freighter drags two ropes of spinning air off its wingtips that outlive it on final by minutes. Fly a light aircraft into one and the night gets loud. Tonight's minima, enforced by the scope:
| Leading aircraft | Medium follows | Light follows |
|---|---|---|
| HEAVY — B744F | 5 NM | 6 NM |
| MEDIUM — A320 · B738 · DH8D | 3 NM | 3 NM |
| LIGHT — C441 · B350 | 3 NM | 3 NM |
Wake minima apply between aircraft established on final. Everywhere else on the scope, three miles radar separation stands — lose it for more than a moment and it's a recorded loss, tape pulled, forms filled.