Updated: 3/12/03

In November, 2002, the Remote ARTS Color Display System (RACD) replaced the Digital Bright Radar Indicator Tower Equipment (DBRITE) at Oakland. This new display system came on line at OAK and several other Bay Area airports as part of the opening of Northern California TRACON (NCT), or "Sierra Approach," in Rancho Cordova, CA.

The RACD system provides numerous enhancements over the DBRITE system it replaced, including:

• Flat panel, color displays;
  
  
• Enhanced weather display capabilities;
  
  
• The ability for each controller using the system to save his or her own display preferences;
  
  
• Increased data display capabilities;
  
  
• Greater flexibility in display choices, allowing controllers more control over how they view information.

The RACD system still uses a keyboard as it's primary data input device, but you will notice the presence of a trackball on the left side of the keyboard for moving a standard cursor around the screen.

As with the DBRITE system, RACD uses several maps that controllers can use to display static information about the airspace they control. In this picture, you see a "West Plan" map of Oakland Airport - when Oakland and San Francisco are landing to the west (OAK RWYs 29 and 27, SFO on RWYs 28 and 1).

As with the old DBRITE system, radar under the RACD system displays primary (raw radar returns) and secondary (transponder returns) target data. Primary returns, since they have no transponder information, are comprised of the target return only. A controller can track a primary-only target, but the data consists of call-sign, speed and aircraft intentions - the altitude is not automatically updated. Primary targets can be aircraft, but they can also be BART trains, vehicles along I-880, flocks of birds, or any other target detected by the radar.

With a secondary return, the computer displays data received by the transponder. For aircraft squawking a non-discrete code (1200), the computer displays a limited data block showing transponder code, reported altitude and can also track groundspeed. If the aircraft is squawking a discrete code (i.e. 0121, or 3224), this code can be correlated with known flight plan data in the ARTS computer and flight plan information will be displayed in a full data block.

One additional change which coincided with the deployment of RACDs at Oakland was a software upgrade to the system, which now utilizes the ARTSIIIE software architecture for processing flight plan data (the DBRITE system used ARTSIIIA software). The enhancements provided by the ARTSIIIE software are too numerous to describe on a small web page. Take our word for it - it's more better.