[MRCA] Early civil radio and ATC

[D. Platt]

Enroute traffic control (sic) was done for years by the airlines, 
themselves.  On e can see early stations with Hammarlund receivers and 
such.  I guess I was probably WWII that caused the real conversion over 
to the CAA.  I had the pleasure of working with FAA people in Alaska and 
the Caribbean basin.  There, the FAA is still working for aviation and 
not themselves.  In both these cases, aviation is important to survival, 
at least economically so in the case of the Carib.  Our station was on 
Swan Island and we needed a new VHF enroute freq, the guys at MIA were 
right there to get it done.  I can imagine it taking two years, now, to 
get it done.  The FAA has mortgaged it soul to contractors (its now FAA, 
Division of Martin Marietta) and now is a mere shell of its past 
technical base.  Those of you who were on the controllers side of the 
house will recall the attitude at OK City when busting you out of school 
was the prime directive, rather than teaching.  I think they did finally 
figure it out that providing the education in a professional manner 
yielded far better results.  Now, all said, there are still some really 
great FAA folks still out there.  In fact some of my best 
friends......   But, fly in the ZCJ (Jax) center area and you'll get wx 
deviations pretty quickly and reliably.  Not so in the NE, and it has 
nothing to do with traffic density.  Its just that you have to turn over 
more rocks to find them.......

DE K3HVG