Notam usage please help!

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 2:54 pm

I have been asked to post this link to help asses the current position on Notams.

http://notams.dsc.net

Please fill it in and indicate you are LAA in the coments.

Thanks,
Rod1

Gromit · Post by **Gromit** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:27 am

Form submitted - hope the feedback is useful.

C Rule · Post by **C Rule** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:28 am

The AIS web site although the ultimate reference for AIS information could not be called in anyway user friendly and does not meet the needs of those of us who fly from one farm strip to another or just enjoy flying locally in class g airspace. By stopping the third party user who provide a graphical interface to the data from accessing the old style PIB NATS has at a stroke remove a layer of safety from the L A community. Their action is not even safety neutral and needs to be reversed.

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:09 pm

Mmmm......

Have you even tried the new website and the Point Brief?

The situation will not be reversed, no matter how much you jump up and down. The top post on this link contains a complaint by one of the authors and NATS reply. The changes were the subject of both NOTAM and notices on the websites concerned.

If you read the entire thread you'll gain some understanding of what's going on.

C Rule · Post by **C Rule** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 7:23 pm

Mike
thank you for your comments I will try and answer them.
Yes I have tried the new website and the various options available and none of them are as user friendly as the graphical program that I used to use. I should add that I had a Nav. Licence in addition to a Pilots Licence so I am used to plotting positions on charts etc and am well aware of the error that can occour with miss plotting.
Because a decision has been made even after suitable promulgation and possibly consultation (I am not sure this went through an external consultation process) does not make it right, it has to be fit for purpose as determined by the community that uses it.
The system should serve you NOT you the system.
I believe the as I said earlier that any change to any safety critical system must at least be safety neutral. This change fails that test.
As to the fact that it is now cast in concrete, well having in the past been a member of both the UKFSC and CHIRP Advisory Board that level of self justification rankles in the extreme

L4H based at Popham

Dave Hall · Post by **Dave Hall** » Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:22 am

Is it really true that graphical sites are being prevented from accessing the required data (the Q-line?)?

These unofficial sites play an important role in monitoring the accuracy of the AIS data as well as giving useful visualisation of the situation in an area.
My tally of errors spotted in a couple of years is now three, the most recent being Exeter LARS unavailable - presumably as it had moved to Cheltenham!
Considering that I call up notams less than once a week on average, and then only the lower left quarter of the UK, there may be quite a few other errors I don't see.

They were quick to re-issue the corrected notams, and I'm not dissatisfied with the service offered, which is certainly improved by the new website. That and an unauthorised graphical map to support it gives me a quick and clear knowledge of the notams, so I hope the graphical sites are not being unreasonably denied the data they need.

Looking at the new model, the deck-chairs are easier to get at, but I suspect the ship's still sinking with the majority of the GA user-base.

I feel embarrassed to find how many use a French site for this important information, but then my electricity and water companies are also owned by the French. Maybe I should just get used to it.

Nigel Hitchman · Post by **Nigel Hitchman** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 9:49 am

Filled in the survey.

Ive used the new site and dont really find it any worse than the old NATS site, seems a bit more convoluted to get to what you want, but not significantly.
Still the same problem with irrelevant admin and military notams and still the problem of your route having to be via navaids and not airfields.

On this last point I had an interesting error last week. I was visiting Sandown, Booker and Tibenham from Leicester, so set up my narrow route brief via nearby navaids. When I got it, I found lots of information for FIR regions in the USA and Canada!! Checked what I had entered and it was all correct for what was on the map- although it was last years map, the up to date one being in the aircraft.
When I substituted SAM for IW my turning point on the IOW it all seemed to be correct. So obviously the NATS system thinks IW NDB is in the USA and not at Bembridge! Now this error was obvious because I got all of these other FIRs, but what if the NATS program had thought it was in Northumberland instead. Then my briefing would have looked normal (we are used to lots of out of area Notmas due to poor coding, so I wouldnt be surprised to see such useful info as the Helimed callsign for Newcastle helicopter had changed or the booking telephone number for spadadem ranges was closing early this Friday) BUT I might not have got relevant Notams for where I was actually going, the Isle of Wight.

Surely this is a big hole in the system, at least if airfields were used for turning points there arent any duplicates, whereas there are lots of duplicate navaids.

Mark A · Post by **Mark A** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:28 am

My Garmin gets round the issue by prompting you to select from duplicate waypoint names (do I really mean an NDB in the UK or a VOR in Taiwan?).

At least it could echo back your route with a decode of the waypoint type (VOR/NDB/Intersection...) and FIR that had been assumed, so it would be easy to check.

Or is that too obvious?

steveneale · Post by **steveneale** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 4:34 pm

Mark, That is in fact exactly what the French system does:

http://www.sia.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/default_uk.htm

Click "Notam" then "narrow route"

No login rubbish and it takes airport codes

How it should be done

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:27 pm

Apologies, not looked at this recently.

No-one's prevented the authors of graphical plotting software from getting the Q Line. It has been and remains available from the AIS site, accessed at www.ais.org.uk It has not always been there, it was provided at my own instigation.

What's happened unfortunately is that some authors have used the Pre-Flight Information Briefings (PIB) on the NATS site. These are not derived from live data, they contain "snapshots" of the live data and are updated several times a day. They are intended for use as a contingency, in the event that the main sate is down. The changes were notified (by NOTAM) but unfortunately the software authors appear not to have picked it up and were caught on the hop.

Most of the software available uses PIB, rather than NOTAM as a data source, and the format and syntax of PIB are not defined by ICAO. (NotamPlot and NavBox are exceptions known to me, they derive their data from complete data provided by AvBrief, rather than PIB)

Regarding the NDB IW, if you use a navaid that does not appear in the AIP in a route it's unsurprising that it is not recognised. You should only use published en-route aids in a route.

L4H

it has to be fit for purpose as determined by the community that uses it

It has to be fit for purpose as defined be the person who pays for it to be provided.
The CAA funds NATS to provide a briefing service that complies with the standards set out in Annex 15 to the Chicago Convention. Those standards do not provide for the data to be provided in a form designed for graphical presentation. xNOTAM, which is part of AIXM, an xml based model for exchanging graphical information is under development by Eurocontrol and the FAA, until that, or something similar, is implemented by ICAO we will continue to be working with data that is not intended designed for graphical presentation.

C Rule · Post by **C Rule** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:24 am

Mike
I note your comments. To say the current system meets the ICAO standard is I believe not enough.
I was part of the team which wrote ICAO Annex 18 and it's Technical Instructions. Because of the constraints of ICAO and the UN the document was not deemed fit for use by its principal users the Air Carriers who produced their own working Document( with which I helped) which WAS fit for their purpose and fully referenced the Annex and was much more user friendly.
Quote:
"It has to be fit for purpose as defined be the person who pays for it to be provided."

Sorry I thought we paid for the CAA through the various Fees we pay to them

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:13 pm

It's not a matter of "it meets the standard therefore it's OK".

The UK is obliged under the Chicago Convention to provide the briefing service set out in Annex 15. Like TAF & METAR, NOTAM are a global standard so that whether you are in Berlin, Brazaville or Belfast they come to you in a standard format.

If people want their data served up in a different format for their own convenience that's fine, and the data is available from EAD. The airlines and the commercial briefing services provided "added value" services using exactly that method.

Under ICAO, funding for PIBS comes from en-route charges, not from the fees that you pay the CAA for say your license or C of A renewal.

You will not persuade the CAA or NATS to provide graphical data derived from information that was originated in a format not designed for graphical presentation. The risk of error is too great.
ICAO, not CAA, decides the format of the data and until they adopt xNOTAM or something similar the situation with graphical presentation is unlikely to change.

I'm not being negative here, just realistic. It's simply the way things are.

Nigel Hitchman · Post by **Nigel Hitchman** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:41 pm

Mike,
it seems you have informed us of another confusing aspect of the Notam site. You say that a navaid used has to be a published en-route Navaid to be used in a route. How do I know if a Navaid meets these criteria without looking it up somewhere in the AIP every time I want a brief??!! I chose IW because it was on my map, published by the CAA, I thought that would be good enough. Obviously not! More obscure criteria to be met to confuse us poor pilots!

You also "defend" CAA/NATS on many matters by saying they have to provide the data in the format required by ICAO and thats why it all has to be like it is. However, surely they can do this with the raw data, that is then used by the FAA, DGAC or whoever in ICAO to get the data they want, just like when I go to work BA has some program that extracts the data without using the AIS brieifng tool. BUT surely this doesnt mean that the briefing service provided by AIS for UK pilots to brief themselves has to be done in such a way. Surely this part can be made more user friendly, just like the French etc have done.

Lets remember that we dont need the Notams to fly, but we need them to tell us where someone has put some restricted airspace that they dont want us to go. Now surely if someone is restricting our access to free airspace then it should be them that pays for it. And surely those that restrict airspace really do want everyone to know that it is restricted, so should aim for the best possible system to tell people in an easy to understand, simple to use system.

unfortunately the CAA's attitude seems to be that- its the pilots responsibility to find out this stuff, it says so in the ANO. We provide the information, it might be difficult to find out but its there, so tough. surprisingly this attitude still seems to work for the CAA, although it wouldnt in much of society.

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:29 pm

Nigel

There is to my mind nothing confusing about the route input to the AIS site. It follows exactly the syntax for an ICAO Flight Plan. Personally I'd sonner have a system that conforms to known standards rather than one that is different wherever in the world I am.

There is only one ICAO indicator called IW, it's the outer marker for the 22L ILS at New York JFK Stick it into a route in any ICAO compliant system and that's what it will come up with.

Outer marker information
Type: OUTER MARKER BEACON & COMPASS LOCATOR
Name: LORRS
Frequency: 226 kHz
Identifier: IW .. .--
Location: 40-43-31.100N / 073-41-35.400W
5.6 nm (33820 ft.) from the approach end of runway 22L

I would be the first to admit that entering a route from Leicester to Sandown, Booker and Tibenham that included the outer marker for 22L at JFK is a bit wierd. What for instance would you expect to happen if you filed a Flight Plan LFRD DCT ORTAC DCT IW DCT EGBG ?

Quite why you think that the fact that IE is not the ICAO for the NDB on the Isle of Wight is a "confusing aspect of the Notam site" is a bit of a mystery to me. Get rid of your innate prejudice and start understanding what you're dealing with and it will get much easier.

You don't need to look it up in the AIP. If you click "Search" on the AIS site, choose "Significant Points" and enter IW as the identifier you'll get

IW KZ NDB LORRS (NEW YORK)

I thoroughly enjoy bimbling around in a 60 year old aeroplane on a fine day but I hope that doesn't make me complacent or unprofessional in my attitude to flying. I understand the way the ICAO indicators work and why they exist, even though I have no instrument flying qualification.

Not sure where you get the idea of a "briefing service provided by AIS for UK pilots to brief themselves". The briefing service provided by AIS is for all flights which originate within the EG FIR's. The pilots can be from anywhere in the world. They could be anything from a foreign airline pilot on a long haul flight to me bimbling around in my Luscombe.

Dave Hall · Post by **Dave Hall** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:55 am

If you want Notams including airfields, use the French SIA site. If you want graphical plotting, also use the UKGA Notam map - takes a couple of minutes max to check the enroute ones you've found. If you're afraid of them getting it wrong, use the AIS narrow route.

Even then, you may miss a late change or a correction to an earlier error.

If you've tried to get Notams, I'm sure you will be treated fairly by 'the authorities'. I worry that a few % of pilots just ring up the 0500 number and then think they've got all the Notams they need.

The harder it is to get the Notams, the more pilots will be tempted to take short cuts with it.