Ais.org Notam

[Maxflyer]

I obtained my PPL recently and so far I have limited myself to fairly local flight, family & friends. However, I am planning my first cross country and I tried to use the NOTAM service on the AIS site. Ugghhh. I put in the info I thought was required for my route, but got stuff for all sorts of other areas.

Can anyone point me to a help guide or explain to me in words of one syllable where I am going wrong.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I couldn't find this in a search.

Thanks

[Andrew Sinclair]

Hi Maxflyer,

This has been an ongoing situation for a while now, the AIS AES tool is not very intuitive when you first start to use it. The easiest way to try to help is if you post the details of the flight you are trying to make and I will put the information in the tool make sure it works and take a screen capture (picture) with all the boxes completed, which I can then post on here for you or send by e-mail.

Let me know the details of the date, time, route or area etc you are planning to fly and I will do the rest. Also I'll post an explanation of the boxes and their contents in relation to your flight to give some background

I have been working on a document of explanation of this tool for a while, which I can send you and also there is a help document here (http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/en/image/briefinghelp_V2.pdf) and an FAQ document here (http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/en/image/faq.pdf). You will need to enter your password first after clicking the link and the documents are quite big so may take a while to display if you are using a 44kbps internet connection.

These are worth a read in the long term but I can get you going in the short term for the flight you are planning.

It has taken me a few months of investigation into this tool to find out all the ins and outs and at the moment there are ongoing discussions to make the whole NOTAM (or more correctly PIB) issue easier for GA pilots.

Mike Cross is the AOPA (and PPRuNe) expert on this issue. I just gave him a ring and he may have a moment to post some more supporting advice for you.

Hope this helps!

Andy

P.S. Once you get used to using the tool it becomes easier!!

[Mike Cross]

Assuming that you are flying a cross-country on a defined route, e.g. from A to B or from A to D via B & C this is how to do it.

Choose the "Narrow Route Briefing"
The yellow tinted fields are mandatory and must have something entered in them.

Briefing ID - anything you like, it's for your own reference. The brief will be stored in the "Briefing Handbook" under this ID so you can re-use it if you want.

Date/time of flight - update to reflect when you intend to fly. Date is in ICAO flight plan formant, yymmdd

Departure/Arrival aerodromes, use the ICAO 4 letter designator, if you don't know what it is, it is listed on the frequency card that comes with the CAA charts, in the frequency table on the left hand side of your chart, or you can look it up using the down arrow button on the form. Having found it, you can click the pointing hand at the left hand side of the search result and it will insert the code into the form for you.

Consult the FAQ if either your departure or arrival a/d do not have an ICAO designator. AIS have created dummy designators for a number of such sites.

Traffic - defaults to IFR/VFR. If you are flying VFR changing it to VFR will reduce the amount of data returned.

FL - enter your intended height as a Flight Level, You will get NOTAM from Surface to 4000 ft above this FL for the climb and descent legs, if you have a cruise leg you will get FL+/-4000 ft on the cruise leg. As you are likely to be below 4000 ft VFR this is unlikely to make much difference.

Route - default is DCT. (Direct) If you have turning points enter them using the same syntax you would use for a Flight Plan (e.g. DCT SAM DCT if your turning point was the SAM VOR) As in a Flight Plan, you cannot use an ICAO aerodrome designator as a turning point so EGTT (Southampton) is not allowed but SAM is. You can also use bearing and distance from a navaid - consult the FAQ for how to do this.

Alternate Aerodromes - yopu will get NOTAM affecting the ATZ of any aerodromes you enter here.

What you have done is to create a route 10 NM wide. If it was a straight A to B flight that's a 10 mile wide rectangle plus the 2 mile radius ATZ's at both ends.

Every NOTAM has a geographic centre, a radius of influence, and a height band affected. Something like a flying display might have a 2 mile radius and a height band form SFC to 5000 ft. On the other hand a long-range VOR could have a radius of 250 nm and affect all heights.

You will get everything where the radius of influence touches or cuts your 10 mile wide route, and where any part of the height band affected falls within your FL +/- 4000 ft.

Another option is to choose the VFR FIR and Aerodrome Briefs (assuming you are flying VFR) The aerodrome brief is sorted by aerodrome name and the FIR brief has a North-South sort to help you locate things that may affect you. Read the brief carefully so you understand how the sort works.

Hope this is helpful

Mike

[Saab Dastard]

A "how to" about the NOTAM site from Mike Cross is THE definitive answer - there's not many knows as much as he does. I suspect he probably knows more than he wants to! ;)

Thanks again for your efforts, Mike - it's so nice to be able to read the EGTT FIR NOTAMs without headbutting the PC. :ok:

Cheers

SD

[Spikeee]

Cheers Andy and Mike, thats some really good information.

I used to realllllly hate getting and reading NOTAMS but it makes it so much easier.

Just wondering though - is it best to get the information just prior to flight or is the night before ok?

I'm presuming its going to be just before but i'm not sure how often its updated.


Thanks


Spike

[rotorcraig]

It's the pilot's responsibility to have read "up to date" briefing information before departure, so just before is best.

If I'm planning a journey I check NOTAMs a couple of days before; there are a few locations near my home field that regularly put on competitions, displays etc. and if I know in advance I can plan a route that avoids.

But then I check again on the day, to pick up anything new.

RC

[Andrew Sinclair]

In terms of the frequency of updates the NATS/AIS AES tool is continuously updated (the office in the control tower at Heathrow is manned H24) and so provides a definitive source of information.

A few months ago a standby solution was negotiated by Mike, Rustle and the gang and is now supplied by NATS/AIS. This is useful on the occasions when the AES tool experiences a problem. This can be found here (http://www.nats.co.uk/operational/pibs/index.shtml) and also from the login page of the NATS/AIS AES tool. Click the link called "Pre-Prepared Link (Contingency Measure)" and it will take you to the same page as the link above.

This contingency measure is updated twice a day and is broken down into 4 briefs:

London FIR & Aerodrome IFR/VFR Briefing
Scottish FIR & Aerodrome IFR/VFR Briefing
London FIR IFR/VFR Briefing
Scottish FIR IFR/VFR Briefing

The validity times are stated on the briefs. This only means that at the time the snapshot of the ADIMS database was taken say 14:00hrs these were the NOTAM that were in the database. The further time moves on from that initial 14:00hrs the more out of date the briefs become, so perhaps a little caution required.

I have heard of one pilot who, on approaching an aerodrome in the South East, was advised it was closed for a short period, due staffing. When he asked about it he was reminded that it had been subject to NOTAM action very recently. The upshot was that this NOTAM message was not included in his PIB from the night before so he missed it. He had to divert to another airfield.

I should explain the abbreviations........

ADIMS is the database where all the information resides.
AES is the portal which we use on the internet to access the ADIMS database.