AROUND HOME : Air-Traffic Control Simulator

YOU LIKE CHALLENGES. You like responsibility. Maybe you’ve even toyed with the idea of having the kind of demanding job where the slightest error or inattentiveness on your part could mean disaster--would you like to be an air-traffic controller?

TRACON is a video game that turns a computer into an air-traffic control radar scope. It paints a picture of the Los Angeles TRACON sector: the skies over Southern California, complete with coastline and airports such as LAX, Long Beach, Torrance and Van Nuys. Airplane symbols move around like they do on an actual air-traffic controller’s screen. Pilots ask for permission to take off or complain that they’re running out of fuel.

Your job, as an air-traffic controller trainee, is to keep the planes separated horizontally and vertically until they land or depart radar range. If you fail to maintain proper clearance between aircraft (half a mile horizontally and 500 feet vertically), lights flash, warning that you have a “separation conflict.” If planes collide, the simulation automatically terminates itself.

The designer of the game formerly worked on computerized air-traffic control scenarios for Rand Corp. The manual is laden with advice.

In order not to overwhelm beginners, the program allows the operator to select easy simulations at first, with good weather, good pilots and only a few airplanes. Then as your mastery increases, you can select stormy weather, incompetent pilots and as many as 99 aircraft in need of directions.

Actually, TRACON seems more like a real-time training simulator than a game. The program suggests a new purpose for computers--giving people a hands-on feel of what it’s like to work in certain professions, beyond what can be gleaned from books and discussion.

TRACON, for IBM PC and compatibles, costs $49. Available from Wesson International, 1439 Circle Ridge, Austin, Tex. 78746; telephone (800) 634-9808.