OK here's my answers hope they can help.
1. Descents - if you sneak up on EGPF/H or D from the south have to start your descent a fuel wasting 100 miles or so before you want to. And then, when close in you are kept above an ideal profile. The same applies, I'm told because of Scottish, when you go to EGNT and EGNV. The Germans do it as well, but they have a bit more traffic.
when approaching from the south, you are arriving normally not on your own, there are many airlines trying to arrive at the same time at many different levels and many different speeds. now its not much help to the tma controllers if you arrive on a free descent doing 300+kts attempting to lose the altitude with 40 miles to go when he is trying to set up a nice line of arrivals for BOTH PH AND PF because one radar controller, usually with the help of their planner, is trying to sort out the arrival sequence for both of those airports , so it may well be a stream of 15 or 20 aircraft trying to arrive from all directions at the same time time every 15mins in not enough controlled airspace for the job. there is not enough controlled airspace because unlike those large airfields down south we share the skies with the worlds airforces all coming to play in the great scottish wilds, and we set aside large expanses of our airspace for them to do that in. but as they like to see what they kill, if there is bad weather in those areas , they play outside usually right under those upper air routes which provide the most direct route to your destination which do not have airways established beneath them because this would adversely affect the mil's ability to attack each other with impunity so forgive us if we aim you towards the safety of controlled airspace.
The 260 lvl margo removes you from the transatlantic flow coming from the newcastle direction east to west as they flow across at all levels. yes we could let you stay high , but that would increase the complexity and subsequently, workload per aircraft. this will result in the sector capacity being lowered meaning less aircraft allowed per hour, so we dont get overloaded, meaning you sit on the ground longer.Dont get me wrong, its not that we never offer direct routings or late descents. infact, the opposite is true, with us sending aircraft in controlled airpace direct earlier in the day,than london is generally able to do, and if the danger areas are cancelled or close early, we will send aircraft as direct as we can. ask the EHAM or EDDF departures that get direct to their oceanic entry points. our prime restriction is whether the military areas are activated
regarding the arrival to newcastle from the south you are entering a complex piece of airspace controlled by 3 different centres. again you are being descended not because we at scottish have said hell no, it is done because we at scottish are carrying no details of your flight as you are flight planned to remain underneath us, to remove some of the complexity so that we can handle more traffic at its peaks. its probably not the most efficient flight profile for you but it is maximised for airspace use, after all you are not the only plane wanting to fly.
2. What do I do with the information of "threshold elevation" and how do I apply it? If somebody rushed out and changed it fifty feet or so overnight, I probably wouldn't notice.
sorry cant help you here, dont work at the airfields
3. (EGPF here) What is wet? Given a bone dry runway, they are regularly reporting WET WET WET. Why? We need to be able to trust ATC and crying wolf to cover your six is not helpful.
ditto here i'm afraid
4. When departing and going south, why can't we go direct, outside controlled airpsace with one of these new fangled Deconfliction Services?
Ok this one is a bit subjective. it depends on many things like where you are departing from, where you are going to , what level you want to go at, whether you are wanting ifr. if you are departing from ph for instance , if you do leave controlled airspace to the east, the sector you are entering has controlled airspace traffic as well as lots of traffic outside CAS. if there is world war 3 being practised in the FIR then the controllers primary responsibility is to the traffic inside controlled airspace. so if they are busy there, they may not provide a Deconfliction service, it may only be a traffic service. If they are busy providing Deconfliction service to other a/c they may not have the capacity to provide even a traffic service so you may be offered only a basic service or refused if a route is available inside CAS.You can file to fly whatever way you want, missing danger areas etc, but dont expect a deconfliction service to be automatic, it is subject to controller workload.
5. And thank you to the lovely lady who gave us direct to EGPD from the middle of the North Sea- I'll not say when less I get her into trouble.
No need to worry, i would like to think that if the large managed danger areas (MDA's) in the north sea were not active and that if the RAF and USAF were not out in force, that most of the controllers who work that particular piece of real estate would route you direct. The only proviso to that is that PD have to accept you on the direct route. if they are expecting a large number of arrivals they may request we route you a slightly longer route, via NEXUS-ATF/ADN so as to help integrate you with the rest of the arrivals. Its all well and good to send you on that direct route outside CAS only for you to arrive in the middle of a perfectly arrranged arrival stream and for pd to have no room at the inn, meaning a possible hold until you can be fitted in. BTW i'm not saying thats what they would do ,but they are within their rights to do so
finally, with regards to not being welcome, that i can categorically state is a load of old cr@p. we welcome any pilots that want to come take a look. its a novelty so when one takes an interest we want them to come in so we can show them the reasons behind some restrictions . it can be eye opening for all parties involved. so please dont think we dont give a toss.