(11) Air traffic control (3/7).

A few details.

In the territory of Slovakia, the main air traffic orientation points were marked by radio beacons called NDB (Non-Directional Beacon); also, commercial station’s radio transmitters were used by the airplanes. One such popular transmitter was Radio Bratislava, located at Veľké Kostol'any. Radio beacons were located at all airports, and also at points important for air navigation, for instance at Břeclav, Nitra, Štúrovo, Jelšava, etc. Computers at the time were unheard of, except for darkly ominous newspaper articles, where the „cybernetics“ were described as burzhoazie pseudo-science, devised to better exploit the proletariat (this just as an illustration of the political atmosphere of the time).

In relation to computers, I cannot miss an observation about the work of the computer we all carry in our heads.

The Air Traffic Controller, in the course of his function, has to keep in his short-term memory a number of various bits of information from a variety of sources, and on the basis of this information he solves a variety of conflicts. Let’s say he makes a mistake, any kind of mistake, serious or insignificant. In an absolute majority of cases, he would stop after a minute or two, and returning to the moment the mistake was made he corrects the mistake. If, however he is in his work interrupted by something outside his sphere of duty – the mistake would be often forgotten.

Apart from communication with the airplanes by variety of means the controller cooperated with neighbouring Area ATCs (Austria, Czech, Poland, Soviet Union and Hungary), with airport towers in Slovakia (Bratislava, Piešťany, Sliač, Poprad a Košice), with military ATC, and even with aero club airfields, or organisations with vested interests in air transport (airlines, police, etc.). The cooperation was chiefly in the form of air traffic information and solving of various problems associated with domestic and international air traffic.

The controller even had a „red“ telephone at his disposal, actually an ordinary black coloured variety one, that was connected somewhere high to the State Security (StB) organisation, or the Communist party (virtually the same organisation). We did not have any telephone directory for this telephone, the messages were exclusively one-way. Usually when it rang some important sounding voice was demanding various services (nobody ever asked if we were busy at the moment, if a collision between airplanes is imminent, for instance – God only knows what the other end was thinking about us). I, for instance, had to „quickly!“ run a few times to the airport passport office a few hundred metres away, to ask their boss not to bang his rubber stamp into the passport of some passenger for „it would be fixed by the Communist Party“. From those days I remember one individual from somewhere in South America by the name of Gilberto Vieira, whom I was entertaining in the café for half an hour, waiting for him to be collected by the Security Service gorillas. His command of English was not exceptional, and he addressed me "comrade"; he was a bit uneasy to hear from me the word Sir in return...

Connection with the neighbouring ATCs (towers, Area ATCs, etc.) was by means of direct telephones, less frequently by means of teletype. The latter one was reliable, but slow; telephones were, mildly put, temperamental. With the airport towers in Slovakia telephones the connection was largely reliable. Problems arose when the local tower operator was not immediately available, away on lunch break, or whatever. When situation arose that required his involvement, emergency landing, for instance, we had to contact him (or the local police, State Security, military garrison, or whomever) by any means imaginable; mobile telephones were at the time some 30 light years away...

With the neighbouring Area ATCs the direct telephone connection depended on the whims of the day: with the Austrian and Czech ATC it was reliable; with the Hungarian ATC the connection depended on the weather along the above-ground telephone lines – winter months were especially bad; with the Polish ATC the connection was sometime available and sometime not. Telephone connection with the Soviet ATC was available but seldom; as to myself, I do not remember speaking with them even once! Prior information of airplanes incoming from the direction of USSR, required by law, was seldom on hand. The Soviet airplanes, despite required by law to contact us well prior to entering our airspace, ignored the law. First time we discovered they were in our airspace was when they contacted us on the radiotelephone. Our reception being poor we heard from them only when they were well halfway in our airspace. Sometimes we received information about their presence from our military colleagues, sometimes even from the airport towers these airplanes were flying nearby.

Contact with the airplanes.

Airport towers used radio telephone for contacts with the airplanes; in 1961, the year I started at the Area ATC Bratislava, the contact with the airplanes was exclusively by means of medium-wave telegraph.

The ground-based telegraphists had their own little office, and messages from, and to, the airplanes, written on pieces of paper, were carried along the long corridor. Urgency of the messages had different meaning for the ATC Controller and for the telegraphist. If, for instance, the telegraphist stopped in the corridor for a chat with somebody, the message had to wait a few (or many) long minutes for delivery. Telegraphists, apart from the receiving and carrying messages, had a variety of other duties. For instance, transmitting messages to airplanes about the airports, meteorological reports, and also "homing". This was done at the request from the airplane, when the bearing of the transmission from the airplane was determined by rotating the telegraphist’s directional antenna. The airplane, with the help of bearing from at least two different telegraphic ground-based stations was able to determine its geographical location. All these „other“ duties were slowing down the flow of information between telegraphist and the ATC controller.

Airspeed of most airplanes at the time was between 250kmh (Li-2, for instance) and 450kmh (a DC6). In terms of distance, these speeds represented between 20 and 40 kilometres. There were also a few jet airliners in the air already (Tu-104), with airspeed of about 850kmh, and the distance flown with that airspeed was 15 kilometres per minute – 75 kilometres in 5 minutes! Connection by means of telegraphy, with the associated slow-shuffle along corridors, was almost meaningless, especially with regards to the small area of Slovakia (roughly 200 x 400 kilometres).

Also available to the Area ATC were two radio telephone transmitters/receivers, working on short wave frequencies (around 4600 and 6500kHz). These were used but very seldom, for the frequent „dead“ areas of reception, and for strong interference from a variety of sources, such as electrical storms, solar flares, etc. When Short Wave Transmission/Reception (a.k.a. VHF), common in aviation around the world, was mentioned to the management they went into spasms! Their resistance to such outrageous novelty (even some of the colleagues, let alone telegraphists) was considerable, because nobody had any experience with radio telephony. There was also a language barrier: in telegraphy, a so-called Q-code was being used for virtually any kind of message. For instance a weather forecast was labelled QAM; flying time and height over, say, Nitra, was called QAF Nitra 1234/1800; airport closure was an ominous-sounding (to us, still) QGO, etc. In radio telephony, four (!) languages were mandatory: the local Slovakian, Czech, Russian and English. The first two languages were o.k. For English a smallish booklet of official phraseology was available (excellent for the WW2 air traffic); booklet of Russian phraseology was not available (if it ever existed).

Around 1963 the pressure to do away with telegraphy was becoming so strong, because the airplanes were gradually doing away with their telegraph operators. Finally, microphones began to appear in our office! These were operated by female radio-telephonists (with the phraseology booklet at hand), and messages were still flying to-and-fro on pieces of paper. The distance was not along the long corridor, it shrunk to just across the table. In the accompanying poor-quality photograph, the radio telephone operator sits on the left, the controller sits behind the slanting board:

The Controller eventually received his microphone a year or two later.

With the arrival of microphones another problem turned up. That should have been, of course, solved BEFORE, not after, but it wasn’t, and I doubt anybody as much as mentioned it.

It happened thus: radio transmitters and receivers on Very High Frequency (VHF) were located at the Bratislava-Ivanka airport, in the very corner of the Slovakian territory. Due to the hilly terrain, also due to their short-range antennas, and also due to the curvature of Earth, contact with the airplanes at most frequently used heights was possible to about 50-150 kilometres from Bratislava; with the very few airplanes flying higher at the time (5,000-10,000 metres) the contact was possible up to about 250 kilometres from Bratislava. Slovakia is, however, some 400 kilometres long and 200 km wide, and the Area ATC was responsible for air traffic control over its entire territory; also, for responsibilities other than air traffic control it is important to be able to communicate with the airplanes to at least several hundred kilometres OUTSIDE Slovakian territory. With the air taxis, flying usually only a few hundred metres above ground, the contact was possible to only about 50-70 kilometres from Bratislava. They, too, were entitled to the Air Information Service, to Emergency Assistance Service, to the Search and Rescue Service – provision of all these services was the responsibility of the Area ATC.

In summary, coverage of the territory of Slovakia with the radio communication service on VHF was insufficient.

Looking at this dismal coverage by voice radio-communication equipment it beggars belief that this cavalier and certainly illegal situation was allowed to exist: here you are, Comrade Controller, area of some 80,000 to 240,000 square kilometres in size, in which are flying airplanes in all kinds of meteorological conditions. Under the law you are responsible for maintaining prescribed distances between them, you are obliged to maintain UN-interrupted contact with all of them, you are responsible for organisation of emergency situations, and dozens of other duties. And here you are, at your disposal, transmitters and receivers that are capable of maintaining contact with these airplanes flying over between 10 up to 70 percent (if that!) of the territory under your control. What happens to those 90 to 30 percent of airplanes that you are unable to communicate with if they happen to get into some knotty situation? Are you complaining? You cheeky unsatisfied bugger!!! Don’t you know that YOUR Communist Party and YOUR Government have much more important matters to deal with than your piffling little complaints? What do you have against our political system to burden it with your nearly malicious constant complaints???

 Believe me or not, that's how the so-called People’s Socialist system operated!!!

Today this „performance“ of the State administration would be termed something like gross negligence punishable by law (I am not a lawyer, please forgive me those of you who know better).

I could never understand the international aviation agencies, ICAO, IATA and others, for their inability to see the poor to dangerous activities of transport administrations in these communist countries (and no doubt other countries as well, some African countries come to mind).

At the time, some airplanes have telegraphists on board still, and contact with these airplanes was over 100% of our territory (albeit contact of a slow and ponderous kind – see previous chapter). And we had a radar at our disposal, too...