Crp controller reports of the lack of a data link between his facility and ngp. Both facilities use ...

Narrative:

We are a stars facility that runs the bulk of our approaches to ngp;a navy base. They have our radar feed. They have stars equipment; but not our stars feed. Because of this; we are forced to make manual inbound and handoff calls for every approach. This takes the radar controller's focus and attention away from the radar scope and forces him or her to make a landline communication that would be completely unnecessary if our stars equipment talked to the navy stars. This is a huge safety risk. Our facility is constantly training new controllers and new pilots; which is the navy's mission; to train new pilots. Hear back/read back is a huge issue here with the brand new; green; pilots and it is only exponentially compounded with the added landline communications. I have been told over and over that this is just a money issue. That is an unacceptable answer for the amount of safety that is at risk. We are talking chump change to get these two systems to talk to each other. This needs to happen as soon as possible. It has been a problem for years and controllers have just had to learn to deal with it. Get the FAA stars to talk to the navy stars and then we can develop procedures and scratchpad entries to ensure a safe operation.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRP Controller reports of the lack of a data link between his facility and NGP. Both facilities use STARS but the system does not communicate and the controller has to make manual hand offs on all inbound traffic. Controller reports this is a safety risk.

Narrative: We are a STARS facility that runs the bulk of our approaches to NGP;a Navy base. They have our radar feed. They have STARS equipment; but not our STARS feed. Because of this; we are forced to make manual inbound and handoff calls for every approach. This takes the radar controller's focus and attention away from the radar scope and forces him or her to make a landline communication that would be completely unnecessary if our STARS equipment talked to the Navy STARS. This is a huge safety risk. Our facility is constantly training new controllers and new pilots; which is the Navy's mission; to train new pilots. Hear back/Read back is a huge issue here with the brand new; green; pilots and it is only exponentially compounded with the added landline communications. I have been told over and over that this is just a money issue. That is an unacceptable answer for the amount of safety that is at risk. We are talking chump change to get these two systems to talk to each other. This needs to happen ASAP. It has been a problem for years and controllers have just had to learn to deal with it. Get the FAA STARS to talk to the NAVY STARS and then we can develop procedures and scratchpad entries to ensure a safe operation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1236958
Time
Date	201502
Local Time Of Day	0001-0600
Place
Locale Reference	CRP.TRACON
State Reference	TX
Environment
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Military
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Person 1
Function	Approach
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Experience	Air Traffic Control Radar 5.5 Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 1.75
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types

Crp controller reports of the lack of a data link between his facility and ngp. Both facilities use stars but the system does not communicate and the controller has to make manual hand offs on all inbound traffic. Controller reports this is a safety risk.