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Today, as part of our AvEd After school Class program, the teachers organized a trip for us to visit the Boston Center in Nashua, NH. Unfortunately, it snowed today, which luckily didn’t impact our Trip to visit the site.
We arrived at the location at 3:05pm, in which other students (4 out of 9) came, most stayed because of today’s weather. Snow up to two inches were recorded in NH today.
The Experience
Because the facility is a Government owned, we had to hand over our Licenses (And non-license ID’s if a license isn’t available like a School ID) along with electronics. No phones or any sort of electronic devices were allowed on the premises since we were visitors. Photography was forbidden.
We entered the facility and parked at the visitors area. They specifically told our instructor to go where they told us. We met up with our Tour guide and we commenced our tour.
The tour
Our tour guide first showed us a slideshow about how the facility and Air Traffic Control works (In this case, stuff like TRACON and other important stuff). Something I never knew about was that every Air Traffic Center began with a Z (ZBW for Boston). After the Presentation was completed, they then escorted us to the actual place where ZBW (Boston Center) was, and showed us many things which they showed us. They showed us where the Weather Center is for Aviation and how they see planes in the sky in the radar (In which they can actually filter to see specific Aircraft. The showed us a CLASSIFIED Aircraft as a demonstration, which I will not disclose which aircraft they showed us, but it was awesome they showed us the aircraft as a demo!)
Moving on, they then allowed us into where the controllers were and they call them “Areas”. We were escorted to Area E where we met a controller and he allowed us to listen in and he showed us how everything worked and we asked many questions. A small Aircraft (Possibly something like a Cirrus or Cessna A/C) Entered the Airspace as an Intruder and only showed its altitude. It was possibly flying VFR. It was an awesome experience and the tour ended ten minutes later than usual. The tour ended at 5:40pm (Originally was 5:30pm).
In the end, they gave us our stuff back and we all had a great time! I would suggesting visiting and having a look around. This was the first the our AvEd museum ever visited an FAA ATCRR facility. They’re planning to also take the class to KMHT Tower, KASH Tower, and, not likely, to KPSM Tower. I had a great time and so did everyone else!