First Contact with Brize

[Lomon]

SS

I was actually trying to be helpful. Who produced your comms card? I spend my day working with documents like the Civ AIP and the Mil AIP and numerous CAP's. For docs that often reference each other and are often supposed to be identical there are errors. Frequency changes often slip through the net. Someone forgets to tell someone else that a change has been made, someone else might have missed a NOTAM.

You might find the BZN controller was bandboxed, monitoring the 2 freqs at the same time, but for personal preference wanted to only transmit on one of them.

I was serious about ringing Brize, if you aren't sure of a local procedure the controllers will be happy to explain why they do it that way because:
1) It beats arguing on the RT about it.
2) It shows someone does take an interest.
3) You will then tell all your mates in the flying club about the new procedure, so the controller will no longer get as many calls on the wrong freq.

Point out to BZN that the chart says to use one frequency whilst the ref card says use another, that way if the discrepancy needs correcting someone will know it exiests, and hopefully try to do something about it.

The bit about the RAF being "there first" was simply a response to your comment about Brize doing zone differently to Bristol. The RAF found it's way of providing ATC services before civil ATC did. Civil ATC is based on those early RAF procedures.

The airspace around Brize might be more complex than that around Bristol, which might be another reason why things are done differently, having different controllers for the different tasks.

I doubt Brize even get sight of every different document that references the airfield. It would take too much time . Would you expect them to check American docs for accuracy? What about docs translated into French or German? Where would the RAF find someone to check out a document in Chinese?

If Brize make any changes to frequencies or procedures they would send the change to AIDU, who would change the military documents, and AIS who would change the civil docs. NOTAMS would be raised until the changes are incorporated into the docs, and then it would be up to all the different suppliers of maps, reference cards, etc. to make those changes on their products.