The change has been on the cards for months now. One would have hoped for a better replacement system than the text file.
I have also struggled with the form, finding that a lot of background knowledge is recquired in order to fill it in. Particulary narked with the free text box called "route". What goes there?
I have seen similiar systems in operation in towers so I guess this is where the "model" comes from. However, we are not ATC bods who have been trained in such systems and in depth terminology, we are pilots.
I doubt that the relationship between NATS and programmer is an understanding one, so that the comprehension of the problem did not deliver a usable, full-featured solution for the end-user, i.e. the pilot. This smacks of a slightly botched, proprietory system to me. It all boils down to giving what the user wants, which needs to be identified first by talking to them. I fear here we have the age old problem of the programmers interpretation of what NATS stipulated.
Surely we should be living in the age of open, transparent systems now?
Having met Ian Fallon, a GA pilot, and author of NotamPlot, he should be given a consultancy job on this. Even if Ian isn't available, I'm sure NATS could have sourced a developer who is both into flying and IT. It appears that there are a lot of us about
I doubt that a return to the text NOTAM file will happen. I gather that was hand-written and humans always favour automation in order to save time. So, I hope to see a fast improvement in the service now that NATS know the problems. (hopefully, they'll listen and act on our comments). Finally, I think they have released this too early and shoudl have contacted a small group of pilots to BETA test in order to iron out problems like logins and user issues, rather than having a large amount of disgruntled people emailing them.