Hi All
sorry to start my 1st post here with a rant but honestly!!!
I’m doing a little trip to Le Touquet tomorrow, so, as I always do, I call up the Notams to see what, if anything, I need to know about.
There is a whole chunk of stuff across three seperate entries (30 lines or so) re the Queen’s birthday celebrations. All of it just list co-ordinates – not one mention of a ‘real’ place (in brackets as some do) to get your ‘bearings’ from.
Now this might work if your a major airline or the RAF – with a team of people dedicated to keep you safe and the time to plot all this via some wonderful front-end (as well as a full ATC monitoring your every move) , but for lttle old me, just trying not to ruin anyone’s parade (litterally), it’s be really nice for a simple link to a graphical PDF or JPG so I can see what’s the deal. Two second look – does or doesn’t affect me – job done.
I’ve searched for this on the web but nadda. It’s hardly fun in pre-planning if you have to spend hours plotting something just to find out it doesn’t affect you. How many are even going to bother given the effort involved?
Little wonder private pilots bust airspace and TRAs.
Grrr!
GC
I rather get a 2014 technology engine and deal with 1950s style telex NOTAMs but sadly we’re in the 50s in both areas and many others.
There is a big joint project between Eurocontrol and the FAA called Digital NOTAMs but if it keeps progressing like it has been, it might be ready for a first prototype implementation by 2050.
Yes this is horrible. Every such notam should contain a URL which takes you directly to a map.
The only “intellectual challenge” is that somebody has to set up the server to pick up the URL (well actually only really the part after the domain name) in uppercase because the notam system uppercases everything, and most web servers run unix and thus most URLs are case sensitive.
Fortunately maps (of sorts) do exist for the Farnborough show. I posted links here
Welcome to EuroGA
Surely they could put “For more info… www. reallyhelpfultopilots.com/mapofhow thisaffectsyou .pdf”.
I’m not actually saying the Notams have to change per se (although as you hint at it’d be nice and is long overdue), just that those posting this stuff need to think about those reading it.
Maybe you can’t do links from Notams (I don;t know), but people put phone#s etc, there must be someway of pointing those who want a simple picture to a website.
GC
I thought it was about time I contributed!
John
aka GC
It would be good if there could be a service like Skydemon’s NOTAM view. The data obviously can be parsed (because Skydemon can do it), and being able to present it on a website will make life a lot easier for those who don’t use Skydemon. It has to be in NATS/CAA/EASA’s interests to do this and reduce the number of inadvertent TRA busts.
The data can’t be reliable parsed. We parse it too in PocketFMS, but we also show the original NOTAM too, because parsing isn’t 100% (And sometimes conflicts with the centre & radius specified in the NOTAM header!)
And some are impossible to parse the shape because they are very descriptive rather than a list of coordinates eg ( “An anti cockwise arc centreed on xxxxNxxxxW running from XXXXNxxxW to GINIS”).
But if you’re looking for a free alternative there is a pretty good job done here in the link below, but it’s country by country.
Colm
UK
Link
France
Link
Ireland
Link
Netherland & Belgium
Link
Germany
Link
Italy
Link
Greece
http://metutil.appspot.com/static/maps/NotamMap_LGGG_2DAY_WR.htm
Bulgaria
Link
Japan
http://metutil.appspot.com/static/maps/NotamMap_RJJJ_2DAY_WR.htm
Arrrrggh There’s always a Queens birthday flight when I want to cross that patch. OK, ‘always’ isn’t fair.
Even with SkyDemon and with it’s graphical display, there is still a number of bounded sections of RA with various times you cant do anything and I am struggling to decipher when I will or wont be able to traverse it both ways safely. There is also an ‘Around Britain air rally’ NOTAM’d for the whole county almost, though that just a case of having a good lookout.
This is your best reference. You do tend to find them for these kind of events.
Time for me to do some reading, or just head in another direction :-)
Could anyone please clarify just very broadly where these restrictions are going to be over the next fee days? Just very broadly please…
If you have a look at the doc I posted just above it has a diagram. Essentially a big box RA up near the Beccles area, and runs all the way down south of the Stansted Zone into the London CTA. Its surface – various upper limits right inside controlled airspace. Looking further north, there are various display paths covering the east of England. And then there is a rally of some kind. All are NOTAM’s but the only one with restrictions is the Queens birthday flypast between 1400 – 1620, though a few gaps exist in various sections.