Paul Hastert Tips of the Week - ATO Changes and Zapgrab

7 December 2001


Greetings Mission Planners,

I'm writing you this week from Eglin AFB Florida, the home of PPFS. PFPS 3.2 is alive and well and hopefully will be entering test today after one last telecon. The 'tentative' release date is early Spring, i.e. March - but this depends on how things go in test. Considering all the exposure that 3.2 has received so far, I am hopeful that the test phase will be anticlimactic.

3.2 will be very much in evidence at the Mission Planners Users Conference next month in Ogden Utah. If you haven't signed up then go do it today! Go to the MPSSF's home page and click on the MPUC link. If you want to make your voices heard regarding mission planning then this is the one meeting you need to go to. If you don't tell the folks with the dough what you want, then you'll end up with, well you know what you'll end up with.

Mission Planning Tip of the Week - ATO Changes

War is an ugly thing - and plans made 24 hours in advance can't begin to anticipate what will happen once the day begins. In order to accommodate changing 'facts on the ground' ATO and ACO changes are released. These are time critical documents because they relate to events underway.

Unfortunately TaskView has no way to read in these changes to incorporate them into the original ATO and ACO to create a new 'master' view. Coding is underway at Hill AFB to add this capability for ATO's in TaskView 3.2, but this doesn't help you today.

Fortunately there is a workaround that works very well for ACO's and less well for ATO's. Unlike some programs (like FalconView) you can run multiple copies of TaskView. That means you can display the original ATO/ACO in your primary TaskView and start additional copies for ATO and ACO changes.

This works well for ACO changes because new airspace defined in the change can be displayed with the airspace defined in the original ACO. It works less well for ATO's because most ATO changes are true mission changes, while most ACO changes are additions.

When you receive an ATO/ACO change, you should do a scrub of the document looking for any changes that effect you. The OEF ATO/ACO's are easy because they include a section with a cumulative summary of changes made.

Mission Planning Tip of the Week - ZapGrab

Taking screen shots is a fact of life. FalconView makes this easy by allowing you to copy the screen to the clipboard, but most times you don't want to copy the entire screen into PowerPoint, you just want a small section. Traditionally you could resize the FalconView window before copying, or crop the image in the next application.

Fortunately there is an easier way, and one that many people are already aware of - ZapGrab. ZapGrab is a 25kb Freeware utility that allows you to copy a subsection of the screen to the clipboard. Start ZapGrab, click on the 'grab' button and select the area of the screen you want to copy.

I learned about ZapGrab from a deployed squadron. They use it to capture FalconView maps/imagery to incorporate in their customized flight cards. Everyone I've shown it to has found it useful. The SEALs were well ahead of me since I've found out it's been part of their SWAMPS Mission Planning Suite since before the last MPUC!

You can download ZapGrab from its home page or from the NIMA GeoTimes page (lots of other good information there).

Paul - pablo@mc130.com

PS: City Graphics Disks don't work with PFPS 3.1.2 - they will work with PFPS 3.2 so don't loose them! More details to follow.


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