Commercial Fixed Wing
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 19.0
Human-Machine Interface
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation - Track / Heading All Types
General None Reported / Taken
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings
While working STAR sectors we identified about a 1/2 dozen or more targets jump around while on an established approach. All incidents were verified with the pilots that they didn't deviate. We have filed literally hundreds of these incidents of targets jumping due to the STARS software. After several adaptation drops (software updates) to fix we are still seeing this problem. We had one controller go out on continuation-of-pay for several days after one of these with targets merging. Controllers are losing faith in the equipment and not issuing traffic because they know its STARS just screwing up. Most of these incidents replayed on carts (automated radar terminal systems software) system are not showing any jumping. These events are scary to watch forcing controllers to work under NATCA/FAA contract Article 65. I hate to say it; but fall back to carts until the STARS tracker is fixed.
SCT Controller reports that hundreds of incidents of radar targets jumping away from the aircraft's actual position on the radar display have occurred since the installation of new STARS ATC processing software. Other facilities using this software have also reported the same problem.