PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Kite flying notams - are these NIMBY jokes?
Old 10th Oct 2010, 20:28
  #8 (permalink)  
Genghis the Engineer
Moderator
 
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: UK
Posts: 14,232
Received 51 Likes on 27 Posts
I used to be involved in amateur rocketry - who also regularly file NOTAMs for their activities. I spent quite a lot of time trying to persuade these chaps that:

(1) A NOTAM does not create an exclusion zone, it simply publishes a notice.

(2) There is still a need for rocket launch controllers to maintain a lookout and cancel launches if an aircraft attempts to overfly the launch site (which happens very often).

I didn't really succeed in getting this understanding across, the rocketeers are often convinced that they have exclusive use of a bit of airspace once they've published a NOTAM.


Most rocketeers are graduate science and engineering professionals; I suspect strongly that kite flyers are not as bright.

So the rest of us need to be very careful.


That said, if anybody lives near one of these it would be a very good idea to look out for the kites. If no kites, we should shop them to the CAA who with any luck will take some appropriate action over wasting their time.

G
Genghis the Engineer is offline