No Aircraft
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Other / Unknown
ATC Issue All Types
General None Reported / Taken
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
An equipment incident occurred as I was working Precision Monitor V (PV). I first started noticing that the keystrokes that we use to set up our distance measuring magenta line were acting erratic. We use the keystroke; 'enter' on the lead aircraft; slew to the trailing aircraft and 'enter' again. After I tried to slew and enter the lead aircraft; the cursor reset to the home position. I did not have very many lines up; so I did not meet the capacity of the system; which is six lines. I called the Supervisor to have a look. He in turn called an AF Technician over. The Technician had indicated that the scope had similar issues the day before and they may need to swap out the scope. Later all the Data Blocks on the scope stopped moving. It took me about three seconds to realize that the tracks had indeed frozen in place. I immediately shifted to my left and started sharing the PO position. There was an override wind on the finals; so compression was a large complexity issue. The Controller working PO and I had to judiciously choose which aircraft we put distance measuring lines on since two finals were sharing 6 total lines. No separation was lost. Equipment failures on the Precision Monitor scopes are becoming more common. When this equipment fails; controllers are left scrambling to different positions; sharing resources that are meant for one controller. At the most critical times (low ceilings; low visibility; wind override conditions); controllers are focusing on moving and communicating with FLMs/AF technicians; instead of having total focus on keeping aircraft separated. We need a solution to this problem. Apparently nothing is being done at the local level more than patching the problem. We need new; more reliable equipment in this building. Three failures in a week at the world's busiest airport is unacceptable.
A80 Controller described a PRM equipment failure noting failures of this equipment is becoming more common place and needs attention.