Practical Exercise — Radar
Work live traffic on a scope
NATS Stage 4 is a practical exercise — delivered over Teams or face to face at Whiteley — in which you're briefed, then manage a simulated section of airspace across a series of short runs, explaining your reasoning and taking assessor feedback between each one. This is a radar work sample in that spirit: direct traffic by heading through a sequence of gates while keeping clear of danger areas and unknown traffic.
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What to expect
- A radar scope with a bearing ring and range rings.
- Aircraft you direct by giving them headings — 000 is north, clockwise.
- Gates to fly through in order, danger areas and unknown traffic to stay clear of.
- A running clock: safety and progress are scored together.
What it measures
- Situational awareness across a moving picture
- Planning ahead and prioritising under time pressure
- Keeping traffic safely separated while still getting the job done
Instructions
- 1Give a heading and the aircraft turns onto it — plan the turn before you need it.
- 2Work out the whole route early rather than reacting gate by gate.
- 3Losing separation costs you more than a slow run does.
- 4Say your reasoning out loud as you go — NATS asks candidates to verbalise, and practising it makes it natural.
Tips
- Assessors are explicitly looking at learning potential — how you adapt when corrected — so do several runs and change something each time.
- Efficiency is assessed alongside safety. A perfectly safe run that achieves nothing is not a good run.
- NATS runs Stage 4 on its own digital-twin platform. This trains the underlying skill; it does not reproduce that system, and NATS publishes no task rules, scenarios or scoring thresholds.
Practical Exercise — Radar
A radar scope with a bearing ring and range rings. You direct traffic by giving headings — 000 is north, clockwise — routing aircraft through gates in sequence while keeping them clear of danger areas and unknown traffic.
NATS Stage 4 runs this kind of work sample across a series of short runs with assessor feedback between them, because it is explicitly assessing learning potential — whether you improve when corrected. Practise it more than once in a sitting and change something deliberately each time.
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