ZJX Dinosaurs Site

Welcome to the ZJX (Jacksonville ARTCC, and if you didn’t know that, you may be at the wrong site!) veterans webpage. I started this for several reasons

There’s an interesting retiree website already in existence for ZAU, one of the other facilities in which I worked, and I’d like to see one for ZJX, too.
I’m involved with a small, local FAA retirees group, and the subject of ZJX comes up every once in a while. However, to date, there’s been little online presence concerning the facility, and certainly no watering hole where veterans of same can congregate.
I’m in the unique position of having unlimited hosting resources available to me and adding another site is a relatively trivial and inexpensive enterprise. I’ve done a similar thing for my high school class as well as create my own site (see Links at left) chronicling my 30 years in the biz.
There’s hardly any info about ZJX on the web. Old people like touchstones to their past. I’d like this site to be that.

By the way, I’m an Air Traffic (AT) guy. My principal focus is AT and frankly, the facility’s existence is to perform and support AT. Nevertheless, there were many people from different disciplines who were essential to the AT mission and who did time at ZJX. Especially Airways Facilities (AF—our electronics and infrastructure support people), but also including TeleType operators, administrative staff, graphics people, food service workers, contractors, etc. If you ever drove through the gate on CR-108 (now moved, I see, to Kings Ferry Road), you were part of the ZJX experience and are welcome here.

Because I left ZJX so long ago (1973) I hardly have any remaining contacts from my time there (1968–’73). Consequently, although I might be able to incorporate what memories I have of ZJX during that period, it’s a woefully small snapshot compared to what others experienced. Therefore, I’m depending on readers to supply information. Personal memories, personnel stories or inquiries, names of those who’ve flown west, etc. There’s an email link on every page of this site that goes to my mailbox. Please load it up.

A few years ago, I managed to collect enough data and had put most of it to paper that I decided to create a website about my ATC career. I had long had the idea for a book about it, but it’s a whole lot easier to create a website, with a whole lot less rejection. You can see the link (“LRod’s ATC Site”) in the column at left if you have any interest in that sort of thing.

In order for you not to have to wade through all twenty chapters of my life as chronicled in that link, I moved the ten chapters that relate to my ZJX time to this site, and you can begin in the link at left, titled “My Life at ZJX”—one half the chapters covering one sixth of my ATC life.

One time there was a gathering, and someone had a camera. Check out the pathetically small collection of images in the “People Pictures” link at left. This from someone professing to be a photography enthusiast (me) who should have taken a whole lot of pictures.

Jacksonville ARTCC Alumni

Pages of Interest