I'm pleased to see that NPAS Birmingham survived
as I'll soon be paying my Taxes to the local Council there,
but it seems fairly obvious that there will be even less time spent over the West Midlands
area as the aircraft gets pulled further away, more often.
Anyway, once the dust has settled, the survivors, and more particularly their "Airwave Rep's ( you know who you are - Nozzer ! ),
might want to start asking a few questions of the NPAS Procurements Department, as to whether anyone
is providing an expert input into the new technology planned to REPLACE Airwave within a couple of years
From what I've heard, the "plan" IS to replace Airwave with a new
Emergency Services Network contract,
based on the 4G Mobile Phone Network - which is good for handling data,
but at present cannot handle Voice communications
Those old enough to remember will recall that when Airwave was first dreamt up,
they forgot to consider airborne use at all, and had to cobble things together to get it to work !
Today there are still ongoing issues with Airwave that were never resolved for the airborne user.
They wouldn't forget again - would they ???
With NPAS introducing more FW's to the Fleet, it will be essential that the new Network
not only accommodates airborne use, but also the increased use at higher altitudes that the FW's operate at.
I really do hope that someone at NPAS has a handle on this
