NOTAMS

[Genghis the Engineer]

It's an awful admission to make, but in addition to flying I have another hobby - model rocketry.

This weekend I was at the annual "International Rocket Weekend" just outside Largs in Ayrshire. We had two constantly active launch sites, both notamed, one to 2000ft, the other to 6000ft.

I spent most of my time on the 2000ft site (I can't afford the rocket motors to get to 6000, and am too lazy to take the high power exams) where, despite the Notam we averaged 4 overflights per day below 1500ft. One twin missed an unscheduled meeting with a descending payload WITHIN THE NOTAMED LAUNCH AREA by (from sight) about 50ft.

Thoughts anybody?

G

[Trefdraeth]

1stly, Last question asked b4 u leave the buildings at my club, 'Checked the NOTAMS???'

So shoot these idiots.

2ndly, stop what you are doing!!! The USA got a man to the moon in 1969. What do you think you are doing!!!

(all in good humour)

Seriously, it's for things like this that that piece of paper is published. RTFM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or you get hurt.
;) ;)

[You want it when?]

Who ever heard of a light twin being shot down by a home-made rocket? I'd apply to those nice chaps at BAC if I were you - if an unguided missle is that good, just wait until you can get some radar and CPU capability!

NOTAMS - They are there to be read and respected!

[Evo7]

Got to agree, check the NOTAM's.

At the weekend a chunk of controlled airspace appeared over Portsmouth for the festival of the sea. Not many people taking off from EGHR knew about it...

[AirScream]

Genghis - Awesome! you do not surprise me! Had a dabble with those in my college days and have to admit even got a bit of funding to buy and make an Estes Commanche 3 - 3 stage rocket. Spent hours making it, test flew it on one stage OK, then fitted 3 motors and launched from my homemade launch rig (made from a biscuit tin - hence the name Cape Custard Cream) I heard it go and definately heard the second stage kick in. But that was it - I never saw it again. I hope a young chap found it before it was combined to death.

I have plans for a liquid fuelled motor made from propane cartridges. Might have a go at that, one day as I have access to LOX and a thermos flask!! :eek:

I remember that a Hughes 500 helo crashed mysteriously, I think in the States, and the investigators found red model paint streaked accross the windscreen. Investigators proposed that the aircraft lost control attempting to avoid the incoming missile! So heed the NOTAMS.


Has anyone been out to a launch meet in the USA. I have a video of a guy launching a full size model of a Patriot missile in the desert somewhere.

[ 29 August 2001: Message edited by: AirScream ]

[Genghis the Engineer]

YWWW !

I'm not claiming that the stuff I build personally will do more than rattle the teeth. The HPR guys however are launching stuff weighing 20kg+, climbing routinely to FL100+. They also usually have computers on-board, usually to record flightpath, transmit video pictures, etc.

Two of the people I know who do HPR for a hobby are Engineers working for Royal Ordnance and the European Space agency. We had one person at the weekend who works for MoD and was making rockets out of spare parts for anti-tank rounds.

Notams, no, won't be anything important anyway, never is....

G

[Lew Ton]

I dispair at the number of people who read NOTAMs (and Daily Nav Warnings). We still get people busting the notified area when we have a display at Old Warden.

[stiknruda]

Notams are not the easiest things to find or read unless you either rent through a school, club or have internet access.

Surely it can not be beyond the wit of some clever young computer geek to be able to put a clever front end on a web page: you enter date, time, departing from and going via x waypoints to destination and then select how wide of track that you want the Notams to be called.

The cfe (clever front end) then prints or displays all pertinent notams.

Or is it already available somewhere?

Stik

[foxmoth]

Not THAT clever, but if you go to www.ais.org.uk (http://www.ais.org.uk) you can pick up all you need - if you note your lat and long for max N/S and max E/W it is fairly easy to sort out any relevant info.

[Howling Mad Murdock]

stik-
Isnt that kind of facility available in the U.S. when you call up WXBRIEF for your route weather - as I recall, the forecaster that you spoke to would check the notams on your planned route, so the must be some kind of software in use - just not over here.

[FlyingForFun]

All,

Haven't looked at NOTAMs on the web, because I get them off the notice board at the flying club. But I'll take a look at the link foxmoth provided.

If I understand you correctly, fm, you specify a rectangular area and it finds all the NOTAMs in that area, right? That's ok if you're going n/s or e/w, but if you're going on a diagonal you still have to filter loads of crap out.

It shouldn't be too difficult to write a program that does this for you. I may have a go at doing that when I get some spare time. I'll post details back here when (if!) it's done...

FFF
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[foxmoth]

Sorry, not that good even, gives you ALL the info.
I find though, if YOU know the Lat & long for your start finish place (just to the nearest degree)it is fairly easy to sort out what you need. It is the same info you will get at the flying club, but at least you can do it before leaving home.

[FlyingForFun]

Hmm, yes that website is a bit more primative than I'd expected.

Anyway, I made a start on the automatic NOTAM finder, so I hope people are going to find it useful! It's coming along pretty well. I've almost finished the data retrieval and parsing. Now I've got to figure out which NOTAMs are relevant to the planned track, and then write a user interface for it. Hoepfully I'll have a beta version ready within a week or two.

But I need a bit of help from you guys:

First of all, does anyone know how many nautical miles one minute of longitude is, at each end of the UK? I plan on taking the average distance, and using this throughout the whole of the UK. I know it's not quite accurate, so I want to find out what the distance is at the north and south extremeties, then work out how much error there would be if I just used the average. If the error is unacceptable, I'll have to use more complex methods.

If no one knows these distances (or knows where to find them, or how to work them out), I can measure the distance in the south off my chart. Maybe a Scottish PPRuNer can measure the distance at the north? Hopefully they'll be so similar you won't be able to measure the distance on a chart, but I don't know....

I also need to appeal to some of you artistic types, because my artistic ability is somewhere just below zero. I need some icons I can use for this program, so if you have any 8x8 or 16x16 icons you can send me (or you want to create some), that would be great. I could also do with some bigger images, to use on the Help/About screen and so on.

Please e-mail anything you think might be suitable to [email protected]

Hopefully this will save everyone a bit of time having to plough through pages of NOTAMs, when only a very small number are relevant to you.

Thanks for your help!

FFF
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[Genghis the Engineer]

1 degree of longitude is cos(latitude) nm.

So at Kirkwall, 1°=0.515nm, and at Bembridge it's 0.643nm.

Given the extremes will therefore vary by 12%, I suspect that just using the mean of 0.579nm/° might not be accurate enough, but the formula is easy enough to apply.

G

[Howling Mad Murdock]

Is that why it takes longer to drive from A to B in the south then?

[GayTangle]

East - West distance is the change in longitude times the cos of the latitude.

(Of the change in longitude is in minutes, then the E-W distance is in Nm).

Great idea, well done.
GT

[Final 3 Greens]

Genghis

To refer back to the heated "glider debate" of a few weeks ago, it would seem that a number of pilots are consulting neither charts nor Notams.

This is very concerning.

[FlyingForFun]

Genghis/GT,

Thanks for the info. I've decided to use Cos(Lat) since it's so simple.

Progress so far is excellent - the software will now identify all the NOTAMs within a specified distance of your course. I need to do some testing on this (compare the distances the software says with those I measure on a chart) before I move on to the user interface, and I have a fairly busy week coming up, but if progress continues at this rate the beta version will be ready very soon. But unless you guys can get me some icons and images to use, it's going to be a very bland looking beta version!

Anyway, keep watching this space, I'll be looking for beta testers before too long.

Cheers,

FFF
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[Genghis the Engineer]

Please accept my advance apologies if I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but...

NOTAMs list lat-long as degrees, but most spreadsheet trig functions work in radians, don't forget to check what your system uses and if necessary convert, the results could be a tad confusing otherwise!

G

[FlyingForFun]

Thanks Genghis!

I had thought of that - easy mistake to make, though, so I appreciate the warning! (I'd hope my testing would be good enough to pick up that kind of error even if I hadn't thought of it, anyway...)

FFF
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