Afternoon, I just thought that I might put in my 2-penneth. My own personal feeling is that, if you have the time, put in the call on your in-use frequency. FIR would almost certainly call us to say that they were transferring you to 121.5. That way as well we can start the ball rolling. However, circumstance can often dictate otherwise. As far as coverage is concerned, some thoughts.
1. The important part of the DF coverage figures to take away is that it is based on coverage over land. Hence, south of Manchester and east of N864 (the north-south airway in Wales) coverage is 3000’ and within the LTMA 2000’ doesn’t quite give you the full picture. However, our actual DF coverage is better than the design specification figures and we certainly get DF over the oggin.
2. Don’t let the DF coverage figures confuse you about our RT coverage on 121.5 though. It’s generally a lot better than the DF coverage. Having said that, there are times when we can hear you and you can’t hear us because of altitude/position etc, or that an overflying ac can hear you, but not us and relay your message to us. It may sound long-winded but it does work, as some of you may be able to testify and all our controllers are trained to do that kind of lateral thinking.
3. On the lateral thinking topic, someone mentioned our radar coverage over the south coast as not being very good. Well that’s true, however, we liaise with a number of other radar equipped units, civil and military, who have radars in those areas and if D&D asks them to look, then people are always keen to help.
One final note about visits. As some of you know, it’s very easy to visit D&D. I think everyone who visits gets a lot out of it and it really is as easy as making a phonecall and sending an email to organize. For anyone who can’t visit but has questions to ask just give us a call. Our number is in the books.
Happy Flying!!
