Originally Posted by
atce
youngskywalker,
as someone who has installed and maintained SAMOS equipment I am very surprised and alarmed by the above statement as I believe NATS would not buy and use an equipment that displays garbage for 90% of the time; on what do you base this figure and can you support it?
ATCE, Its been our experience at Aberdeen that the Samos equipment is indeed '****e'. That is the reason we are there apparently, to correct it when it feeds us rubbish, which it does more often than not.
Why did NATS buy it? Its obvious isn't it? It saves a fortune in qualified Weather men!! Plus it gets the pound of flesh out of the ATSA's in Aberdeen, while keeping ATSA's employed as Met Men down south I believe.
It is a very limited system, measuring vis between two fixed points a couple of meters apart, and cloud straight up only. How can that be anything better than rubbish? Its regularly affected by, condensation, frost, fod, and other weirdness and gives utter ****e readings as a result.
Our 'unbreakable, ultra reliable' Samos has also broken down on at least 8 occasions that I know off since installation in April. Its tendancy for Specials is THE most annoying thing in the world, usually wrongly, and continues to flash, even when cancelled repeatedly until the next ATIS is due.
Most worrying is the fact that 'Winter' hasn't arrived yet !
Even though we have no traffic at night at the moment, we are still required to do live metars every hour for TAF requirments, its said. The question is, during sickness when Samos is on Auto all night, and during breakdowns, none of the heli companies or airlines seem affected by the lack of a TAF and go flying anyway??!!
Can anyone explain what the actual requirement is for a TAF/Forecast before flying?
too.