Frequency Cards that used to come with charts

[John Brady]

NATS have withdrawn the frequency card that used to come with charts and for the new 1/2 mil south just out you have to download and print the card from their website. The proposition is that this is updated every 28 days with the AIRAC cycle and so you have up to date info.

I have been experimenting with printing using my HP6500+ inkjet and have 4 problems.

1. The alignment marks on the digital file are designed for professional machine printing and when using back-to-back printing on an office printer the sheets don't align. Not be very much but the images are clearly not centred equally on the page and office printers us the page edges not the alignment marks.

2. Inkjet printing is not as crisp as professional printing and the small font is sufficiently fuzzy to be difficult to read, especially where the black font overlays a buff background. It would be particular difficult to read at night. Laserjet may be better but I don't have one.

3. Printing has to be done on card as paper is too flimsy for this purpose and anyway the back to back printing shows through paper making it even more difficult to read. The types of standard printing card I bought at Staples has an absorbant "wove" surface making the print quality worse than on good quality paper. I could not find smooth card of the right weight for this job.

4. Although this saves money for NATS we will have to print these on A4 card so half will be cut off and wasted and the use of thousands of ink jet printers will be less environmentaly friendly than central printing.

And it appears to produce a poor quality card which would be diffcult to read accurately in the air.

Has anyone had issues (or indeed success) in printing frequency cards - I can pass the consensus on?

John

[John Dean]

I have just tried printing one out with a laser printer on some card that I had available and whilst it's just about legible, it's not a patch on the professionaly printed ones. But then, would you expect anything different?

I think it's very sad that they are not going to be available with the maps as I find them very useful in the aeroplane.

[Nick Allen]

It's rubbish! I printed it on a high-resolution laser printer, and the text is blurred, and not at all legible! I looked at the source on the website, and it seems to be a PDF, so there is no excuse why this shouldn't print sharply.

They could probably make life easier by having it monochrome, with light grey tints instead of the colour bands. (Perhaps if they had printed it in mono to begin with, it wouldn't have cost so much, so they could keep on supplying it!)

Keeping the scales on, with a warning that they might not be correct, seems to be asking for trouble.

[tnowak]

I printed the card using a very expensive, colour laser printer (not mine!) and the printing is very clear and crisp. I suspect the issue is to do with inkjet printing and available printing resolution that the typical home user has available.

The printing alignment markers are still slightly misaligned though.

Tony N

[Nick Allen]

I should have said: I work in typesetting/publishing...so I'm used to delivering printed information, generating PDFs, etc., and we have high-quality laser printers here. That said, it looks sharp on-screen when zoomed, so it could be that the (pointless) colour background is screwing up the print resolution on some devices.

Frankly, I could do a better one, starting off by binning the Morse code, and some of the AIS blather, to create more space, AND BY NOT USING SO MUCH UPPERCASE!

[iancallier]

Another - brilliantly thought out idea. Where nobody will bother/ and if they believe every body will print it out monthly - DREAM ON.

They don't really want anybody to use radio!
Many folk do not even buy a map annually!

[James Chan]

Personally I have not needed to use the frequency cards as the text is small and harder to read in the cockpit.

I've use software like SkyDemon to generate and print my PLOGs before flight. The most up-to-date frequencies are present on the same page, which I have found incredibly handy.

[ChampChump]

See:

http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=82415

I'm sure there's an opportunity for a better version, although how much info one can get into a small space and what is deemed essential/useful is open to debate.

It's prompting me to compose my own with gen that I deem essential. One worth the effort of getting laminated.
I'd include some ATIS frequencies and exclude Morse and phonetic alphabet, to start with.

[mikeblyth]

I copied and pasted in word. You can delete what you don’t need and make font as large as you want