Post by Simon HobsonI agree, the utter crap that is allowed through should mean someone being
held criminally negligent. The number of notams that plotting tools like
NotamPlot can't handle tells you how bad the information is.
I don't disagree but I would argue that a great attraction of flying
is to be able to go abroad, and if the UK notam feed was cleaned up
but foreign ones were left as they were (which is the very best
scenario) then the pilot would still have to learn to read when they
venture abroad.
But there is no prospect of the UK feed being changed. There are
several categories of contributors and they just churn out the stuff.
Post by Simon HobsonWe regularly see notams that either don't give a location other than the
lat/long (I don't have a mental picture of the grid overlay) or use the name
of some obscure village that only locals will have heard of, unless you know
the area you will never know where the village of Little Trumpton is - so how
the hell do you know if you're going near it ?
For every VFR bimbler who will ask for lat/long or a navaid there will
be half a dozen who will vigorously demand "Little Trumpton" :)
Post by Simon HobsonIt's time the CAA actually did something positive and mandated some better
standards for UK sourced notams. It CAN do it, there is no international
obligation that prevents it, all it has to do is set down standards and
reject any submissions that don't cut it.
The CAA is now finished - except as an EASA *enforcement* body. They
are quite fond of telling people that, too.
Post by Simon HobsonFor starters, they should all have sensible geographic coverage. What use is
a notam that covers the whole of the UK - as well as huge chunks of the
surrounding FIRs ?
A large part of the problem is that the coverage of a notam is
specified by a circle. If your route intersects that circle, it gets
picked up. This is really stupid; a lot of areas are not circles and
the circle has to be big enough to enclose the whole object.
Algorithms that can detect if a line intersects an arbitrary shape
have been around since the earliest days of AI in the 1960s.
Post by Simon HobsonWhat use are notams that don't actually convey any information ? My favourite
example is when one of the Bristol airports swapped frequency with another
Airport X. App frequency change from abc.de to klm.no, AIC blah applies.
Airport Y. Frequency change, AIC blah applies.
I think referring to an AIC or AIP for any meaning is stupid because
few pilots will bother to look it up. The reference should be provided
(preferably as a URL) but the notam should contain all the relevant
info itself.
However, I blame the training business (and their syllabus) squarely
for this stuff. There is no problem getting and reading a narrow route
briefing from ais.org.uk and it is very rarely that one has to plot
coordinate lists. Such lists tend to feature in NAVW notams which can
be ignored; aerial activity can happen anywhere anyway. The only time
one *has* to plot out coordinate lists is when the area is restricted
or prohibited (or it's Prince Charles going to lunch so it's a temp
Class A) and that is very rare.