anyone in Scottish....

[buzid]

A quickie for anyone who works the Scottish sectors.........

Why, whenever we depart from NI to enter Scottish do we have to be; 1 re - identified, and 2 have our mode C re verified on initail contact.
BFS have had SSR for near on 2 years now (at a guess), and we don't have to go through this procedure when being handed over from any other SSR airspace into yours. (or any other in Europe that I can think of for that matter) Is it because your equipment works on a different flight data processing system?
Why also, do we have to squark ident when departing your airfields, but not some others? Is it the same reason, i.e old equipment that doesn't automatically 'fix' the flight plan to the SSR code?
just curious.

sqwarking buzid.

[Bagheera]

Cannot answer your first point buzid, but with regard to the second Scottish airfields have no direct link to the central NAS computer. One of the functions of this computer is to allocate the squawks for flights. At most other Nats Airfields your Squawk is allocated and printed on the strip in front of the controller. However here in the backwaters we have to phone Scottish Control to ask what your squawk will be (thats just one of the reasons we always are coming back saying"sorry i was just on the phone...").
Also when your flight departs ,a departure message (DM) is input into the Nas to tell it you are airborne and provide tracking and updates on your progress to the sectors that will handle you. Again most airfields have Auto DM facilities whereby the SSR at the airfield having interrogated your transponder a couple of times will automatically input this data into the NAS. Due to a lack of onsite SSR, at my airfield at least, this has to be done manually,hence another phone call.
because of the manual nature involved a squawk ident is requested to ensure the humans havent cocked up.
Just out of interest EDI was due to get a link to the Nas but this has had to be put back for a little while and also we will soon be getting an on airfield SSR head, so things are improving.

[controller friendly]

I have raised this one on a local level a few times. A few replies have come back, Scottish do not yet have a feed of the BFS SSR which does not help, therefore they do not see traffic departing the TMA until about FL70 depending on the pressure.
Also, it has been said, what odds pushing a button twice to give the ident, not my opinion but that is what we are up against!!
You'll also notice that Scottish repeat the 4 digits when they ask you to ident, which I have seen bring up all sorts of different callsigns at times!!
A question back, are pilots not supposed to give a passing altitude on departure to a radar unit?
Regards
cf

[buzid]

C Friendly, and others

Thanks for taking time for the replies and info.

To attempt to answer CF's question (and this is without a copy of MATS or the Planning maunual in hand), I understand its only a requirement to have mode C info verified once now, and thats when first entering the SSR environment. Of course if being handed over to a procedural or non SSR unit then altitute passing is passed on initial contact as part of the call.
Please someone correct me if this is wrong.......

[10W]

ScACC, in common with every other unit in the UK, can use recognition of a validated code/callsign pairing where the pairing can be confirmed.

In the case of traffic coming from another UK Area unit, the confirmation is inherent since we are all using the same code/callsign facility and database. So in those cases the identity is always assumed without the need to ask the pilot anything.

Where the aircraft comes from another unit, then we have to use the other 2 MATS Part 1 methods. That is, observing a code change, or asking for an ident on the assigned code. In a lot of cases, with the exception of Aldergrove, the departure airfield radar unit will not have talked to the aircraft anyway and no check of the Mode A or C will have been carried out.

As for the Mode C check .... it's all in the UK AIP. On your first call with any/every Area Control Centre you must pass your level and your cleared level if different. It's all about belt and braces, and given the number of level busts that we have in the UK, good thing too !!!

[controller friendly]

Sorry!!!!:p

I was being sarcastic about the passing altitude bit. That was my point, I know pilots are supposed to report it for us to verify it but the number who do not is surprising. To be honest it was the beer talking which had been taken purely for medicinal purposes:D :D :D

regards
cf