The radar control test takes your hands off the aircraft. Traffic flies the airway network by itself; your job is strategy. Every aircraft carries an assigned exit, junctions funnel everyone into the same corridors, and your only levers are discrete flight level changes and direct-to reroutes. Meanwhile the radio speaks, and you must judge each call as yours or noise. This guide covers the network logic, the separation game at the junctions, and the radio discipline the test quietly grades.
What is the Radar Control Test?
The test measures strategic traffic management: seeing conflicts forming a minute ahead and resolving them with minimal, discrete interventions. Where the dynamic radar test is hands-on steering, this one is the planner's chair. Real sector work is much closer to this: aircraft fly their routes on their own, and the controller's craft is choosing the few moments to intervene and the cheapest instrument for each.
The stage is the FEAST style Y-tree: airways that branch like a river delta toward exit leaves. Each aircraft's data block names its assigned exit, something like an arrow to J, R, W or O, and aircraft converge on shared junctions where separation gets decided. You hold 5 NM lateral or 1000 ft vertical everywhere, using flight level changes to stack converging traffic and direct-to instructions when a current track will miss its exit. The radio layer runs on top: calls arrive, some addressing your callsigns, some generic chatter, and each demands a RELEVANT or IGNORE verdict within seconds.
Which Exams Include the Radar Control Test?
Strategic routing tasks on airway networks are hallmark controller-selection instruments. Candidates commonly report this test type in:
- FEAST and related ATC selection batteries, where the Y-tree format is native
- DLR screenings, in ATC-stream planning stages
- ADAPT, within its applied control tasks
- Aon / cut-e batteries, in planning and monitoring scales
Providers change their content without notice and publish no official syllabus, so treat this as candidate-reported guidance.
How the Test Works: Format and Rules
The levers and the ledger:
- Aircraft fly the airway network autonomously; you never steer directly.
- Each data block shows callsign, level, and the assigned exit leaf. Delivering every aircraft to its exit is objective one.
- Separation of 5 NM lateral or 1000 ft vertical must hold, and junctions are where it gets threatened.
- Your tools: discrete flight level changes with a confirm, and direct-to reroutes toward a chosen waypoint.
- Radio calls arrive throughout: RELEVANT if the message addresses one of your active callsigns, IGNORE for weather and maintenance chatter. Verdict within about 8 seconds.
Suppose AFR145 at FL300 and another aircraft converge on the same junction at the same level. One click puts AFR145 at FL250; the paths cross with a thousand feet between them, and both still make their exits. This is exactly how it looks in the test:
The reroute tool and the radio verdicts:
The load ramps steadily: Level 1 runs three aircraft over two minutes with three radio calls, while Level 4 pushes six aircraft across three and a half minutes with eight calls, fewer of them relevant, so the noise you must ignore grows faster than the traffic.
Separate with levels, deliver with routes, and let the radio interrupt your eyes but never your plan.
Scoring: What a Good Result Looks Like
Three ledgers: correct exits, separation losses, and radio verdicts. A strong session delivers every aircraft to its assigned leaf, keeps separation losses at zero, and holds radio accuracy high without letting calls freeze the scope work. As in every control simulation, a separation loss dominates the arithmetic; a missed radio call is a scratch, a loss is a dent. Early small interventions read as competence, a flurry of late corrections reads as firefighting.
How to Prepare: Strategies That Actually Work
- Read exits first. In the opening seconds, glance every data block and build the delivery map: who leaves where. Every later decision hangs on it.
- Scan junctions, not aircraft. Conflicts are born where airways merge; watch the convergence points and ask who arrives together.
- Prefer the level change. It is reversible, cheap and instant. Save direct-to for genuine routing errors, an aircraft tracking away from its assigned leaf.
- Act at first suspicion. A level change ninety seconds early costs nothing; the same change twenty seconds before the junction may already be a loss.
- Batch the radio. Hear the callsign, match it against your active list, verdict, return. Train the eight-second reflex so calls never pull you into the scope trance.
- Graduate to the sandbox. The sector control test removes the airways and hands you full vectors; training both makes the Y-tree feel small.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Levelling both converging aircraft, which solves nothing and doubles your intervention count.
- Rerouting when a level change was enough; direct-to changes geometry and can create the next conflict downstream.
- Forgetting an aircraft after solving its conflict and letting it sail past its exit.
- Marking generic chatter RELEVANT under load; the verdict is about your callsigns, not about how urgent the voice sounds.
Practice This Skill
Strategic control is pattern recognition plus early, minimal action, and both are trainable. Build them with the Radar Control module, which reproduces the Y-tree network, the exit assignments, the level and direct-to tools and the radio judgments exactly as described here. Level 1 is free, and the guided tutorial walks you through the format before your first attempt.