Ah - Spitoon, you come bearing light.
My username is not mrcross because I want to convey anger, it is because it is my name. I am Michael Richard Cross so I tend to use my initials and surname as a username.
And I was beginning to think you guys were scary.
Having cleared that up, the bit from MATS is from a copy dated May 2002 so I doubt that it's out of date.
I appreciate that there is a natural tendency to cover ones backside by including everything, however you can have too much of a good thing.
I am currently working on a project to improve the Pre-Flight Briefing Bulletins (PIB's) that are put out by AIS from their new website at
www.ais.org.uk - in fact I've been talking to them today and I'm up at Heathrow for a meeting with them tomorrow. If you have a look at the Private Flying forum here on pprune, the GA Discussion on
www.flyer.co.uk and the threads on the CAA OnTrack Project at
www.flyontrack.co.uk you will see some of the problems.
SRG, DAP and presumably yourselves are concerned about airspace infringements and there is certainly plenty of evidence from ATCOs and a/g operators to indicate that pilots are taking to the air while not aware of TRA that has been notammed. The PFA Rally at Cranfield and the Farnborough TRA are two cases in point.
While it is undoubtedly correct to say that they are in the wrong, they do need to be given information that is accurate, relevant and easily assimilated and that is just not available at the moment.
The airlines have their ops departments to do it for them, they are flying SIDS, STARS and Airways and are therefore largely not concerned with things that may be taking place in the open FIR. They're not likely to run into parachutists, air displays, balloons or military exercises because they don't take place in CAS. GA pilots on the other hand are, and they don't have the benefit of an ops department.
Part of the problem is the withdrawal of the old A1/A8 bulletins on 19 August and their replacement by an automated system. The old bulletins were hand-assembled by the experts at AIS who could discard stuff that they thought was not relevant. The new system puts it all in, duplicates and all, and does not sort it into any geographical order. We're working on that at the moment.
The other part of the problem is that there is far too much information in the bulletin that is not relevant to the average GA pilot. It runs to around 34 pages for EGTT, around half of which is Aerodrome and half En-Route. MATS seems to me to have it about right in its suggestions as to what should not be notammed.
Flower thinks NOTAM are safe and reliable - the website went live on 19 August and has gone down on 9 Sept, 21 Sept, 4 Oct and 10/11 Oct so far. I'd hate to have a car that was that reliable.
niknak's gratuitous abuse is unworthy of any comment and says more about him than me.
I hope that some of the more rabid elements in this forum can now see that I am not an ignorant PPL who thinks the world revolves around him, speaks through his backside and blunders into the sky without a care in the world. If I were I wouln't be talking to you.
Less prejudice and more thought will work wonders. Sorry if I got off on the wrong foot.
Thanks for the dialogue.
Mike