Sct controller reports that hundreds of incidents of radar targets jumping away from the aircraft's ...

Narrative:

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.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: 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.

Narrative: 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.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1313797
Time
Date	201512
Local Time Of Day	0001-0600
Place
Locale Reference	SCT.TRACON
State Reference	CA
Environment
Light	Night
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Commercial Fixed Wing
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Final Approach
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Approach
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Experience	Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 19.0
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Deviation - Track / Heading All Types

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.