I'm a retired air traffic controller and former Senior Aviation Analyst in Colorado. Currently instructing ATC at an ARTCC.

While I was a controller, I was selected to do off site work with NASA (CTAS, UPR, TMA), MITRE(Dynamically assigned airspace), and several ARTCC/TRACON facilities around the US.

Worked for SAIC in the development of RNP reduced separation routes for major US airports. Got a crash course in Python on MITRE's IDASS/CRE Jupyter programming platform while I was there.

Current duties include laboratory instruction, academic instruction, and ATC scenario building. I also get under the hood on AIX and Linux, coding stuff to automate messages to be fed to the simulator.

As a simulator programmer, I do a lot of pattern matching and substitution in XML files. Most of it is done with sed and awk, because of client/server differences. There are no XML tools to speak of, and no Python on the server. I have some JAVA, C, and C++ experience as well (even studied some JOVIAL), lots of intermediate Python, and managed the LAN for the ATC Union while I was a controller.

Oh, and I'm probably the oldest anime fan in Colorado, according to Yasuna Oribe.

I come to this site to ask questions, because people say I need professional help.