The sector control test is the summit of the battery: a free-form radar sandbox with real vector control. Every aircraft accepts heading, altitude, speed and direct-to commands; every scenario ships with conflicts engineered into the geometry; and the score cares less about whether you solved them than about when. The signature metric is the anticipation window, the number of seconds before closest approach at which you acted. This guide covers the command set, the conflict engine, and the early-action doctrine that separates expert sessions from firefights.
What is the Sector Control Test?
The test measures proactive traffic management under full control authority. The scaffolding of the earlier radar stages is gone: no fixed airways as in the radar control test, no single steering axis as in the dynamic radar test. You hold the whole toolbox, and with it the whole responsibility for seeing conflicts before they mature.
The scenario generator works backwards from trouble: it picks a meeting point and time, then places aircraft so they will arrive together, crossing, converging or climbing through each other's levels. The radar helps you exactly as much as the level allows, predicting conflicts up to three minutes out and drawing them as orange lines that turn red when closure becomes imminent. Higher levels strip those aids away, and the difference between your score with and without them is precisely the skill being measured: whether the prediction lives in the software or in you.
Which Exams Include the Sector Control Test?
Free-form sector simulations are the capstone stage of controller selection. Candidates commonly report this format in:
- FEAST and related ATC selection batteries, in dynamic ATC simulation stages
- DLR screenings, in the ATC stream's applied simulations
- ADAPT, within its advanced multitasking scenarios
- ANSP-specific second-phase assessments, which commonly run sector sandboxes of this design
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 command set and the physics:
- Click any aircraft to select it; its data block shows callsign, level and speed.
- Command heading in 10 and 30 degree steps, altitude across the standard flight levels, speed within the aircraft's envelope, or direct-to any waypoint.
- Aircraft obey with realistic dynamics: 3 degrees per second turns, standard climb and descent rates, slow accelerations.
- Keep 5 NM lateral or 1000 ft vertical separation; a loss costs 100 points and marks both aircraft.
- Deliver each aircraft to a sector-edge waypoint for a clean handoff, worth points per aircraft.
- Conflicts are predicted up to 180 seconds out: orange lines for developing conflicts, red dashed for imminent ones, until higher levels remove the aids.
Suppose two contacts show a crossing line with two minutes to closest approach. A single 30 degree turn now, or one level change, dissolves it invisibly; the same conflict twenty seconds out demands a hard turn that ripples into the next geometry. This is exactly how it looks in the test:
The command panel and the conflict picture as the test presents them:
The load curve is steep: Level 1 runs four aircraft with one engineered conflict over two minutes with every aid on, and Level 5 runs twelve aircraft, five conflicts, faster traffic and minimal aids across four and a half minutes.
Experts act two minutes out with ten degrees. Novices act twenty seconds out with everything they have.
Scoring: What a Good Result Looks Like
The ledger: handoffs completed, conflicts resolved, separation losses, and the anticipation window averaged across your interventions, with a multiplier rewarding early action. Acting more than 120 seconds before closest approach earns the expert multiplier; under 30 seconds earns a penalty factor even when the conflict is technically solved. A strong session hands off everything, loses separation never, and shows an average window above 90 seconds. Losses dominate the arithmetic, one is worth minus 100, so the priority structure the score teaches is the professional one.
How to Prepare: Strategies That Actually Work
- Scan for closure, not proximity. Two aircraft far apart on converging tracks are the problem; two aircraft close on diverging tracks are scenery. Train your eye on the velocity lines.
- Intervene minimally and early. Ten degrees at two minutes beats forty degrees at thirty seconds, in points and in downstream geometry.
- Prefer altitude for crossing conflicts. A thousand feet dissolves a crossing permanently; heading solutions must be un-done later, and the un-doing is where new conflicts breed.
- Work the whole sector on a loop. Solve, release, next: the score punishes tunneling on one pretty solution while a second conflict matures unattended.
- Wean yourself off the aids deliberately. Train some sessions predicting conflicts before glancing at the lines; the high levels assume the prediction is yours.
- Keep the handoff ledger in view. Conflict management wins the drama, but forgotten aircraft drifting past their exits quietly bleed the score.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Waiting for orange to turn red; the anticipation clock is running against you the whole time.
- Solving one conflict into another by commanding large, unplanned turns.
- Ignoring speed control; five knots of differential is often the cheapest solution on converging tracks.
- Forgetting commanded aircraft, an offset heading that never gets a direct-to home turns a resolution into a missed handoff.
Practice This Skill
Anticipation is a trainable habit with a measurable number attached. Build it with the Sector Control module, which reproduces the vector authority, the engineered conflicts, the CPA prediction and the anticipation scoring exactly as described here. Level 1 is free, and the guided tutorial walks you through the format before your first attempt.