Not in my backyard
Dick, Dick, Dick
My contacts asked me to respond to your “Hawaii Discovery Tour”.
First off, have you EVER visited Ausfic to see the operation?
My money is that you have not at any stage so how about it???
Moving on:
For the domestic area, Ausfic flightwatch staff operate VHF and HF radios and phones.
As per AIP, Flightwatch staff will provide briefing materials to pilots to the first point of intended landing at which point pilots are to call the briefing office and request their weather/NOTAMS and flight plan properly.
Ausfic Flightwatch staff also answer the telephones that nominate and cancel SARTIMEs…and they follow up on the many many “forgot to cancel” SARTIME expiries.
During the day, 3 consoles are manned to provide HF communications across the domestic airspace. This is a hell of a lot bigger area than bloody Hawaii last time I looked – but hey, global warming and all huh???.
These HF consoles are flat out most of the time trying to deal with the “backwards and forwards” nature of duties imposed upon them by some group of fools who got rid of Flight Service.
NOTE: the Flightwatch people do not have any flight plans in front of them when a pilot calls, just a log to write down what is said.
The fourth console provides the VHF ghosting service and is staffed by exactly the same number of people – that would be ONE!!! – as prior to the movement of VHF to ATC.
They also have the phones and intercoms and the responsibility to follow up on expired SARTIMEs.
At overnight the FOUR (4) (IV) domestic consoles combine to ONE (1) (I) with that officer operating 9 separate HF frequencies (on 45 separate receivers!!!!!) and 25+ VHF frequencies (ghosting the flightwatch VHF fiasco !!!).
To make it clear, this ONE officer on a night shift has:
25+ VHF Aviation radios
45 HF Aviations Receivers and 9 HF Aviation Transmitters
Flightwatch Telephone
Intercoms to ATCs
Marine Emergency HF Radio for South Australia
Marine Emergency VHF radio for South Australia
CENSAR (SARTIME) Alerting
During the day, briefing office staff answer the briefing phone and supply information as requested by the highly trained and competent pilots making the requests.
During the day a Briefing office staffer also answers the Flightwatch phones and process SARTIME nominations and cancellations as well as chase up the 30-50 SARTIMEs that expire each day because the highly trained and competent pilots “forgot” or “just about to call” or ‘could not get to phone” (and pay nothing for the service)
Dick, do some research closer to home before you run around the world (depriving the Aust Gov of tax revenue coz no doubt it’s a tax deduction) and see what is done here.
Or at least read the many many posts that describe what is done here.