Notam usage please help!

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:35 pm

“He must be doing something wrong”

Or alternatively perhaps he is finding it hard to use? Most likely problem is an incorrect turning point. I have suggested a map based “gross error check” to try to help with this. We will be discussing it tomorrow.

Rod1

Joe Iszard · Post by **Joe Iszard** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:30 pm

Rod said “He must be doing something wrong”

Possibly! He's flown for 25 years, works with computers all day every day,
been to Scotland twice this year. not exactly a novice,!

Thing is we get too much 'dross' with each 'enquiry'

PS, he's just phoned me - didn't make Scilly's - low cloud for three days!

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:48 pm

I've just done Norwich to St Mary's, Narrow Route Brief, IFR/VFR SFC to 5000 feet, everything else in default. Four pages. What on earth did he input?

What I need is the bit that looks like:-
Report reference no: 2155235

Joe Iszard · Post by **Joe Iszard** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:19 pm

I've just done Norwich to St Mary's, Narrow Route Brief, IFR/VFR SFC to 5000 feet, everything else in default. Four pages. What on earth did he input?

I'll ask him when he gets back! Maybe we can all learn something from this.

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:08 pm

“Rod said “He must be doing something wrong””

No I did not Mike did, I was making a different point! There are two sides to the argument. Mike will say that it is user error and if you push this, ignore that and it is a Sunday then it works and he will be right. I say it is just too hard for a lot of ordinary Joes to drive!

If you put me in an F1 car I would probably crash at the first bend. Is that because I am a bad driver or because the car is not suitable for an ordinary person to drive?

Rod1

Foxbat01 · Post by **Foxbat01** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:28 pm

Rod1 wrote:“
If you put me in an F1 car I would probably crash at the first bend. Is that because I am a bad driver or because the car is not suitable for an ordinary person to drive?

Rod1

You have learned to fly though and your ship is propable as fast and operates in three dimension.

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:20 pm

Summary of the meeting (more detail to follow)

Data feed

No progress from last year, in fact things have gone back. We have been promised a meeting very soon to try to move this forward

Gross Error Check
I have taken them through the logic, and an awaiting a response.

Official graphical display of Notams.
Possible big movement on this. Promise of a meeting in very near future, but requested not to make details public yet.

X-Notam

Promised more info on progress very soon, I will forward this ASAP.

Help and training material

This had improved for the old site, but is poor or non-existent for the new site.

I would say on balance progress has been disappointing in the last 12 months, but there is some hope for the near future.

Rod
Representing the LAA and BMAA

mikehallam · Post by **mikehallam** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:07 pm

For a start I am confused by the motives of those LAA representatives being in bed with AOPA, despite the latter's refusal to join UK representation to EASA & who are against to LAA on training airfields too ?

This liaison of opposites is accentuated by the know-all attitude of those who tell us only what the CAA are internationally obliged to present re Notams [so stop moaning !] & those looking to get easy data access for leisure flyers.

Preferring something that made sense & accepting their user warning, I was happily using "Fly-Dsc". This free web site gave me all I wished for: easily operated, recognised my strip's name and showed maps and Notams.
Judging from recent failed attempts to use it & the tone of dsc's current questionaire the CAA have now ky-boshed their use of Notams.

The result is I try the 0500 phone and go flying which I imagine is illegal and so on, but I am only human, not a scheduled operator !
Whereas I think I understand that the CAA needn't bend to our lowly needs, this site did fill a yawning gap.

So exactly who or what is stopping private sites from organising & redistributing freely provided data in a [to me] sensible format ?

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:50 am

"For a start I am confused by the motives of those LAA representatives being in bed with AOPA,"

Notams are a problem for almost all GA pilots. There are differences between the LAA / BMAA issues and the AOPA side, but as you can see from the debate I am not slow in coming forward with them! It is pointless being at continues war with AOPA, is you have more synergy than difference in a particular area. Mike and I work together on common elements, but we are not joined at the hip. If there was no difference between our positions I would save myself the 320 mile drive and the day off work!

Fly-Dsc should be back up as the Q-Line has been reinstated.

“So exactly who or what is stopping private sites from organising & redistributing freely provided data in a [to me] sensible format?”

The 3rd party sites are back up. A better data feed is very high on my list of wants, and I am very disappointed that no progress has been made over the last 12 months. The lack of progress is due to a change in supplier – to EDS. In the medium term this may be a good thing, but time will tell.

You do have the up to date tel numbers I assume?

Rod1

mikehallam · Post by **mikehallam** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:43 am

Rod,

Thanks for that encouraging feed back. I just tried DSC and after plotting Jackrell's to Popham pressed the get Notams button. Because I suppose Farnborough might still think it can monopolise free airspace.
What I got was :-
"Please complete this anonymous 5 minute NOTAM usage survey

There is a problem with our NOTAM source and as such we cannot currently provide NOTAM information"

Any ideas ? And what new numbers did you mean pls, as the 0500 354802 is the one I have listed ?

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 1:45 pm

Mike

As you'll appreciate, I am an LAA member and fly a Permit aircraft, otherwise I would not be posting this.

Rod and I differ a little in our approach. The best way to describe it is probably that Rod pushes forward with what he wants while I spend more time working out what the constraints are. You may not like my answers but they are given in the knowledge of the issues governing what can reasonably be achieved. It is fair to say that Rod is more bullish than me, however I am sure he will agree that I was fairly assertive during the meeting.

Re some of his points:-

Data feed

No progress from last year, in fact things have gone back. We have been promised a meeting very soon to try to move this forward

This was overtaken by events. The redevelopment of the central area of Heathrow meant that UK AIS had to relocate. At the same time a decision was made to fully migrate to EAD. This meant that UK AIS would no longer maintain their own database on their own servers. The old system (ADIMS) was provided by Thales Information systems of France and has now been retired. The new system is provided by EAD (part of Eurocontrol) through their contractor Frequentis. Guido Haesovoets of EAD, who I was already in contact with regarding a data feed was at the meeting. I'm not aware of any meeting being promised, however I shall be continuing my correspondence in an effort to move this forward. You are probably not aware that last year I organised a meeting of software developers at AIS. The two main people from that group, David Adams (drauk of fly dsc. net) and Mike Hall of Notam Map were both invited at my suggestion to yesterday's meeting but both were unable to attend and sent their apologies, as did two others from the GA community. I had previously asked them to produce details of what they want from a feed, together with a safety and business case, so that I can push for it on their behalf and attempt to secure funding but they declined to do so.

Gross Error Check
I have taken them through the logic, and an awaiting a response.

Rod and I had previously discussed this and I had sent in details to AIS prior to the meeting. What we are looking for is a route display on a simple map so that you can spot if something in your route is wrong. A good example of this is Nigel's use of IW (Bembridge NDB) in a route. Since this was withdrawn from service earlier this year the software found the nearest thing with an ICAO locator of IW, which is the locator for the 22L ILS at JFK New York. You can imagine what this did to his brief and a simple map display would have shown it up.

Official graphical display of Notams.
Possible big movement on this. Promise of a meeting in very near future, but requested not to make details public yet.

Not quite so, I had suggested to Rod that he check it out before publicising it as Guido from EAD intimated that he knew it existed but did not know how it worked. The fact is that you cannot reliably plot anything other than a circle from NOTAM. That's because the underlying data does not support anything else, there is no defined syntax for describing anything other than a circle and the height band. Sure enough the thing Rod's got himself excited about is a simple circle plot, it exists in EAD Pro but not in EAD basic (which is EXTREMELY basic). Guido suggested that it might be possible to make some of the features of EAD Pro (which is a paid-for service) available in a "lite" version at no charge. Here's what it looks like. As you can see dirty great circles covering the entire FIR are not particularly exciting.

X-Notam

Promised more info on progress very soon, I will forward this ASAP.

xNOTAM are part of AIXM, which is a method of exchanging AIS data, including graphical entities. It is being developed by Eurocontrol and FAA. We need to get hold of whoever has been representing the UK at the meetings to get an idea of progress. UK AIS are just starting to produce the AIP using AIXM tools. That is likely to be the first phase as the main commercial payback will come from doing away with the need for re-keying of the static AIS data that is used in navigational databases and FMS. Dynamic data such as NOTAM and AIC will follow later and will allow proper plotting of shapes.

Help and training material

This had improved for the old site, but is poor or non-existent for the new site.

A major point of my own input. The new site means that the help has to be re-written and what is there is sketchy and inadequate. As Rod said, it had been improved over time on the old site but was not carried over to the new.

I would say on balance progress has been disappointing in the last 12 months, but there is some hope for the near future.

Not sure I'd concur. We had a major transition that went very well. The feedback that I have had says that the new site is a big improvement on the old one and the new Point Brief has been well received. Login is no longer required for access to static data such as the AIP. It is now a lot more difficult to incorrectly enter the dates than it was before. The system is now hugely more resilient with the databases now housed in two seprate datacentres in two different countries with automated fallback on failure rather than relying on a single web server.

Re the third party software. The changes were the subject of NOTAM but were not picked up by a number of the software authors who were consequently unprepared. Rod and I both emphasised the need for a process to identify and inform authors, part of what I was trying to achieve with the meeting I organised last year. Although Rod says the third party sites are up you are absolutely right that fly.dsc.net is not providing NOTAM. You'd need to contact David to find out his reasons. There was a problem when the AIS site switched over because some people were getting the data from the NATS contingency backup site and the Q line was missing, however that has now been re-instated. I do not recommend the use of that data source because the data it contains can be up to 4 hours old and is only valid for 24 hours so it can't give a brief that is OK for an overnight stop and return. It is also quite possible that as the contingency for which the page was created (failure of the AIS Web server) has now receded due to the increased resilience detailed above) a decision may be taken to discontinue it.

Please don't try and perpetuate a war between AOPA and LAA. As I've already said, I am an LAA member and fly a Permit aircraft. I also give up my time to sit on the NC. If you have a problem with me personally please say so. I have not to my knowledge ever done anything against the interests of LAA members.

For a start I am confused by the motives of those LAA representatives being in bed with AOPA, despite the latter's refusal to join UK representation to EASA & who are against to LAA on training airfields too ?

AOPA UK represents the interests of its members directly to EASA, other organisations decide to do it differently, that's a simple matter of choice and should not be taken as implying that one organisation is againsst another. AOPA is very definitely in favour of training from unlicensed fields. People outside of AOPA have wrongly made the suggestion that AOPA are against it. If you choose to believe them that is your lookout. What has happened is that AOPA asked for an extension of the existing consultation period for LAASG or for a second round of consultation so that newly proposed EC rules which would override whatever the UK might decide could be incorporated into the discussion. If you are interested the correspondence is available here. The original comments that kicked ther whole thing off have been withdrawn from this site and hopefully the matter can now rest.

For info the nearest I have been to being in bed with Rod was when we both squeezed into first his MCR01 which went up at 1450 fpm on a hot day with 100 hp dragging two pie eaters and then into my own aircraft where 85 hp gave very considerable less performance. Attending the same meeting should not be taken as implying a sexual relationship (He may be younger and better looking than me but I don't fancy him).

My own report on the meeting is on the AOPA Forums.

Rod1 · Post by **Rod1** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 11:38 am

Mikes post puts the AOPA position. As this is the LAA BB I have little choice but to respond with a few clarifications, some of which will have to be Monday as I want to go fly.

Firstly, Mike aka AOPA says;

“We had a major transition that went very well”

All very “hail fellow well met”

The LAA view is quite different. Our objective is to get more people to check Notams and to make the systems more relevant to our members. With this in mind the key performance indicator for any “new database” is when the switch was thrown did it impact the number of people checking and understanding Notams?

We know that about 43% of people who check Notams use a 3rd party system, which is not surprising as they are more in tune with pilots, which is not the group which the current system was designed for. Mike and I were sent info on the new system, and it was Notamed. None of the info I had contained the key bit of info that the Q-Line was being removed (it is now back). At a stroke, most of the 3rd party systems stopped working!

From an LAA perspective the transition did not “go very well” it was far from this!

Rod1
LAA/BMAA rep for Notams

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 8:37 pm

The Q line was not removed from the new system. It was removed from the backup system, which for the reasons I have outlined above I do not believe should be used except in the way it was intended, which is as a backup when the main site is down.

You flatter me when you say I put the AOPA position. I do not, I put my own opinion. I am a member of the LAA so you can also take it as the opinion of a member of the NC of LAA as well as being the opinion of the AOPA representative on these issues.

Continually bashing AOPA is not going to move this forward Rod. If you disagree with me by all means do so but understand that it is me you are disagreeing with, not AOPA.

I also went flying today

Mike Cross · Post by **Mike Cross** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 11:49 pm

HoHoHoHo!

http://www.pprune.org/forums/private-fl ... -long.html

gasax · Post by **gasax** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 9:03 am

This is the classic problem of having to rely upon volunteers to sort things out. Mike has put a lot of effort into this shambles and we should be grateful for that. His point of view has always seemed to me to defend AIS and their constraints at most junctures.

That may be an effective way of 'getting on side' with AIS but I do feel it has had the effect of moderating the level of criticism which AIS actually deserve.

Even now with the 'new and improved' site getting NOTAMS is needlessly difficult and so long as 'client representatives' are fighting AIS's defence for them I find it difficult to see how things are really going to improve in any acceptable time frame.

I've stuck with trying to use the sites - but for a long time I largely gave up on the narrow route - largely because I never knew whether I had all the applicable NOTAMS or not. The PIB briefing whilst stupidly long at least had everything on it.

But there are a few things that should have been sorted out from day 1. How can AIS possibly not extent some level of 'quality control'. They send this stuff out - and then deny any responsibility for its content. They are not the Post Office. A small amount of QC would stop a huge amount f the 'ar*e covering' NOTAMS that clog the system. Demanding a link to something graphical for the MOD NOTAMS could be done tomorrow.

But at the end of the day NOTAMS have to be graphical and anything that slows down getting to that point just means more of us are running on borrowed time before we infringe something. AIS have a clear responsbility to get to that point quickly. Sabotaging the interpreting sites that already do that is unforgiveable.

Messing about with databases and where its hosted is a classic IT distraction. Great, well done guys - but completely irrelevant to ALL of your clients - so nothing but a distraction which you have allowed to slow down improvements which are desparately needed