Chapter 30: The Right Approach

With Melvin’s help, you make a smooth landing. “Whew – just under 37 seconds!”

The man with the clipboard is back. “Hey, nice job! I guess we owe you a patch!” He hands you a patch welcoming you to the “Sky Stars.”

“Thanks,” you say, “I’ll iron it on later.”

“Yes, right,” he says, “no time now, come with me.” He starts off, walking away from the terminal this time, toward the control tower. “My notes say that you aren’t just a pilot, you also have experience with air traffic control.”

Melvin flies to your ear and whispers. “Air traffic control consoles are a lot like spaceship consoles! Say yes!”

“Uh, yeah, a little,” you say.

“Okay, great – you’ve probably noticed we’re short-handed here.” You’ve reached the tower, and he escorts you into an elevator. As it rises he asks, “Have you ever used an ACR/GCA system?”

“Uh… I don’t think so?”

He checks the resume. “Yeah, you’re probably used to something much more advanced.” The elevator opens to a control tower that seems to have no one working in it.

“Where is everyone?” you ask, somewhat alarmed.

He sighs. “I told you, we’re understaffed.”

You suddenly realize that you’ll be the only one landing planes for the entire airport, and swallow nervously.

He gestures to a console with three buttons and a microphone. You see colored airplanes going in all different directions on the screen, and some kind of weird strobing yellow line connected to a fat black line.

“See, it’s easy,” he says. “Obviously, this is the ACR screen. It’s how you keep planes from colliding, and from exiting legal airspace. Flashing airplanes are having an emergency, land those first. Guide the planes to the runway strobes, and switch to the GCA with this button here,” he points to the middle of three buttons.

“What do the other buttons do?” you ask.

“Uh…” he picks up his radio. “Hey Fred, what do these other buttons on the ACR/GCA do?” A voice on the radio crackles back, “Beats me.”

“Huh,” he says, “probably don’t wanna touch those. Anyway, like I was saying, you simply center the nose on the glide slope and the localizer on the GCA, and you’ll hear two tones to let you know it was a safe landing.”

“What if it isn’t a safe landing?”

He looks at you, seeming to wonder if you actually know what you are doing. “Well, obviously, you’ll also hear two tones, that are subtly different than the safe landing tones. Are you sure you’ve done this before?”

“Heh, yeah, sure… I was just, uh, testing you.”

“Ha, oh okay,” he says, looking back at his clipboard. “Okay, great, well, good luck, I gotta go. By the way, there’s a nasty crosswind out there today, watch for that.”

“Ha, yeah, no problem,” you say, as he steps into the elevator. You wait for it to close, then scream, “MELVIN! What are we going to do?!”

“We’re gonna land a bunch of planes!” says Melvin excitedly.

“ACG, GCR, glide slope localizer, I don’t understand any of this!”

Melvin looks out the window of the control tower. There seem to be planes flying around trying to land in all directions. “Well,” he says, “this seems like a perfect time to figure it out!”

Put the Final Approach cartridge into your Atari 2600. Use game select 3. Set the difficulty switches to b. Play until you have 500 points. Post a link to a video in the comments section of yourself completing the challenge.