HF Radio

[CORBRASILEIRO]

Hi!,
Would you please give me your personal opinion on commercial HF Radio stations?.

We are presently using Stockholm Radio as a secondary HF Radio for communications, -old fleet no ACARS etc.-, quite pleased with their support. However if their is any input you might be willing to share I'll appreciate. Tks coop.

[clicker]

I can only reply as a previous user as I no longer work in the airline/ops business.

I used to work from Transmerica Airlines (formerly Trans International) and we operated a lot of charters flights to many remote parts of the world.

We used Berna radio on a daily basis to get departure/arrival times and also to update crews with Wx and any changes etc. At that time (1980's) we had no internet and also the telephone service to parts of Africa etc were poor at the best of times and therefore Berna was very useful and a quick way of passing ops messages to the crew Phonepatching avioded any misunderstandings which could come about when relaying a message via a handling agent.

I can recalled a few times when their support was first class although I understood they were not cheap to use either.

Rgds clicker

[747-436]

Use Stockholm Radio now Speedbird London has closed. Never any problems with them, usually very clear.

[OpsControl]

In the age of ACARS CPDLC SATCOM GNSS GPS ADS-B
HF is all but redundant
Caveat: Unless yr AC is still a DC-8 et al
Other HF in the States is SFO ARINC
FYI

[747-436]

Unfortnuatly some Airlines with very modern aircraft still don't have ACARS or such like!!!

[boredcounter]

My (if only it were) fleet fully ACARS equiped, all comms travel that way when aloft.

Had a total ACARS fail last week and a request to divert a service, guess who came up trumps?

Thanks Stockholm Radio, not only got the message through, as expected, patched the aircraft through, kept the link open for 20+ mins with nothing but static to let them know both parties were still there.

(Stockholm Radio, sorry we on the ground forgot to sign off with you, forgive us little div into EDDS)

I have only had SELCAL and HF equipment since '97 but they have never let me down in that time.

747-436

Speedbird London, was that Portishead Radio?





Bored

[747-436]

As far as I know Portishead radio was never the same as Speedbird London. Portishead closed a few years ago I think.


See: http://www.gka.btinternet.co.uk/ for info on Portishead radio.

Taken from this post: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=242923

[CORBRASILEIRO]

Thank you guys for your replies.

Both for redundacy purposes and for lack of ACARS equipment we will continue to use Sto Radio. Tks again.

[OpsControl]

Bored
With regards to total ACARS outage, was it SITA or ARINC ?
Curious ....
Tnks
OC

[boredcounter]

747,
Thanks
Ops
I believe we are via SITA, not ARINC, however, without a debrief from IT, I think it was the web based interface that failed. Test messages were replied to as I found out later when the system re-booted and caught up with itself.
Like HF, it is all magic black boxes to me, until it all goes Pete Tong..........
Thanks STO radio, thanks Co. for maintaining HF despite ACARS...............
Bored

[ralle72]

we are also very happy with sto radio. in some cases if they can´t reach our planes via hf (e.g. in the caribbean, sargasso sea) we try to establish a connection via airinc in new york. this also works fine.
we also have acars but the sita based one, so we keep sto radio alive... :}


cheers
ralle