Could Someone Try This Out Please.

[Andrew Sinclair]

I am starting to do some work on the issue of the NATS/AIS NOTAM web tool with Mike Cross and the AIS team, trying to improve things long term and also help provide useful results easily in the short term.

The links below are two Adobe Acrobat files each with a screen capture of a "Narrow Route Brief" with the fields completed. Please could you use the information in the screen capture on the AIS website "live" to see if it provides a brief and the length of the brief.

Here is the AIS URL:

Aeronautical Information Services (http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/login.jsp)

You may need to change the validity period to one further in the future (they are set for tomorrow) but other than that they should work ok. Let me know if they do.

25 nm radius around Redhill (http://mysite.freeserve.com/andrew_sinclair/egkr50.pdf)

This covers and circular area of radius 25 nautical miles centred on Redhill and includes Redhill a/d NOTAM.

Kent + Local Airfields (http://mysite.freeserve.com/andrew_sinclair/kent&localairfields.pdf)

This covers an area roughly centred on Kent and extending to OCK VOR up to Southend and across to Manston and includes all the GA airfield NOTAM in the area.

Both of these should reduce the length of the NOTAM returned to something approaching readable (e.g. 4 pages) as opposed to 30 odd.

Thanks for you help.

Andrew Sinclair

[BRL]

Stuck for a few days. :)

[Whipping Boy's SATCO]

Andrew, check your private messages.
:)

[Andrew Sinclair]

Thank you for the Private Message and e-mail replies received so far. It is good to see that making the Aeronautical Information Service Self Brief web tool as user friendly and intuitive as possible is as high on the agenda as it has always been. In recent months, the forums have been used to feedback information and views from the GA community to the NATS/AIS team, some good, but some, perhaps rightly, more negative in nature. It was clear at the end of the recent visit to AIS at Heathrow that the NATS/AIS team have gone through a sea change and realise the real value in working with the GA community to improve the web tool to meet our specific requirements where these can be accommodated along side the other areas of the aviation industry. This, however, will not happen overnight and a prolonged effort is required to facilitate this change. I am hoping to use this along with other internet based forums in a positive manner to keep commander awareness at a high level and provide ongoing reports of progress in this important area of pre-flight planning.

It is clearly understood that all commanders have an obligation to check NOTAM prior to embarking on a flight. The objectives of the ongoing work are:

a) Work towards a web tool that is as user friendly and as intuitive as possible.
b) Make sure confidence that all applicable NOTAM have been read and acted upon prior to take-off is as high as possible.

There are still many challenges, not least of which is that some view the private flying sector of aviation as small when considering the financial contribution we make. We are swimming in the same pond as large commercial airline businesses. Whilst we cannot realistically inject cash to 'buy' a larger voice, we can use other methods of communication, lobbying and negotiation, to make sure that our voice is heard, acted upon and that our requirements are reflected in the tool.

The immediate future agenda includes further meetings with NATS/AIS to discuss the possibilities of a graphical user interface (GUI). Whether this is part of the existing system or, more likely, provided by third party software developers is all subject to discussion. The current and past popularity of products like ‘NotamPro’ and ‘notam plot’ leads to the belief that further changes should be made to enable these products to function fully and correctly. This requires the release by NATS of certain raw code for every NOTAM, the so-called ‘Q Line’. This ‘Q Line’ provides the key to these and other similar NOTAM GUI products. There are issues surrounding the ‘Q Line’ release that need further discussion between the parties involved. It is hoped that these discussions will commence soon. Whether it is realistic to expect the ‘Q Line’ to be released to third parties outside AIS/NATS whilst enabling AIS/NATS to maintain control over the coding and it’s correct use by some form of licensing, accreditation or certification scheme remains to be seen.

Watch this space…..

[flower]

I have brought this back upto the top as I can see that there is a posting on the AIS website and difficulties still being experienced.

This is a good place to start looking at what is trying to be done to help :)

[bluskis]

No it doesn't work, perhaps as I haven't a clue what needs putting in all the boxes. What is Briefing ld?. Why so many boxes, one for each notam perhaps?

Could not see how to specify either of the two areas you mentioned.

[Andrew Sinclair]

Hi bluskis,

If you click here (http://mysite.freeserve.com/andrew_sinclair/kent&localairfields.pdf)

You should get an Adobe Acrobat file with all the boxes completed for a "Narrow Route Brief" using the AIS tool; it takes a little while to come up with 44kbps link. If you complete the boxes as shown in this file (you will need to change the date to a relevant future date) then on pressing "SUBMIT" you should be presented with a reasonable length NOTAM for this particular area. It is only an illustration to show how a "Narrow Route Briefing" can be used to provide NOTAMs for local flights in that area but the principles can be applied anywhere else. Some folk just keep to their local flying area and this type of brief can be stored and used again and again. This doesn't help others but I am working on that at the moment.

Let me know if the Adobe Acrobat is the problem or when the information is entered into the AIS web tool.

The AIS tool will provide up-to-date NOTAM , but there is still a way to go before we have access to the information required by the NotamPro/NotamPlot type software products. This is being actively worked on at the moment as has been metioned here and elsewhere. In the meantime as pilots we have to work with what we have got. Please send me a PM if you want further information or help. I am in the process of collecting all the information I have learned into a document which in due course I can make available if it helps.

To answer you direct questions:

A briefing ID is any name you give to that screen of information to enable it to be recalled from the "Briefing Handbook" and used later on; like a file name on a computer file. Just call it "mybrief1" if you like.

As to the amount of boxes, this is due to the filtering that is used in the database. Each set of boxes is a criteria which the tool uses to filter the information so the result is specific to the area of the flight.

Mike Cross has put some useful info :

here (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=94224)