NOTAMS idiot's guide.

[gingernut]

I am trying to make sense of the NOTAM system, prior to my cross country training. Can anyone suggest an "Idiots guide."

Thanks

[Negative Charlie]

You might take a look at the (non-commercial) site for NOTAMPlot (http://www.notamplot.flyer.co.uk/download.htm), though this might make it too easy!

Hyperlink preservation note: it really is non-commercial. From the Web site: "NotamPlot is free! However if you find the program useful I would appreciate it if you would make a donation of at least 10 UK pounds to a charity of your choice in exchange for use of the program. The software is available to all as a gesture of goodwill after much development effort. Please reciprocate this goodwill with an appropriate donation."

(Edited to gloat about pipping tacpot to the post.)

[tacpot]

Not sure if this will help right now, but it may in the future: get yourself a copy of NotamPlot from http://www.notamplot.flyer.co.uk

This software does it's best to plot to location of the area affected by each NOTAM. Once this is done, some of the scale of the problem goes out the window. It certainly helps sort out the wheat from the chaff, and I think it also helps with the decoding. If you can see that a NOTAM affects an area of the North Sea it is likely to be due to either Military Ops, SAR, or Oil Field Operations.

(Edited to complain about being "pipped to the post" by NegativeCharlie.)

[bookworm]

Can you be a bit more specific about the aspects of the NOTAM system that you want help with? I don't think there is an idiot's guide as such, short of Annex 10 and the Manual of AIS which can be obtained from ICAO at substantial cost.

[gingernut]

Cheers folks, looking at the sites now.

Bookworm, I guess I was a little overwhelmed by the jargon, (abbreviations etc)although my text books are helping.