At EGHI / Solent...

Pressure,
Runway in Use
Airspace
Weather
Non - Standard
Strips

Talkdownman.....hear hear.

From a pilot's perspective, controllers that use degrees after everything, millibars after everything etc. conflicts with publicised rule and gets a lot of my colleagues confused and off down the same path of duplication. Surely this practice goes against the point of trying to minimise transmission times thus freeing up an already busy frequency? "Best Practice" is often thought-up by an individual, spread as gossip, and before we know it has cast the rule book in to historical oblivion.

If there are enough reported safety incidents by not using degrees, millibars etc. after every number then the rules will be changed. Until then, can't we all stick to the rule?

Would anyone in London care to offer a reason why frequencies such as 126.825 are read more often than not as "126.82", ie the old fashioned way? Sorry to single you out but it's the only Centre that still seems to use this practice in my experience.

can you select the final "5" as a frequency?
or does it fill this final digit automatically if the frequency ends 25 or 75?
Having not been in a cockpit since I was a trainee and at the time only interested in looking out of the window I have no idea what your frequency selection box thingy looks like. I was told that even if we read out the full 8.33 khz frequency, only 25khz spacing could be selected.

That is why I do not bother anyway.

When .833 spacing was introduced we (London) were instructed that the full freq. must be read out, it has never been rescinded..

PRAWNS

Why does it have to spell something. It doesn't have to be easy to remember, it is written on a plaque in front of you.

Memorable acronyms are used by pilots to remember lists when they are not available to see. An acronym which is written down in front of you is completely unnecesary and misses the whole point of an acronym.

It doesn't need to spell anything, it just needs to be a good handover for that particular position which could mean a different list on a different sector.

Agree entirely. A symptom of the mental processes of many in NATS nowadays, I'm afraid.

2 s

Agree entirely.

It's called a Checklist. It cannot possibly be universal for use on any sector.

Agree entirely.

Fargo Boyle

How else are you supposed to differentiate between (for example) 132.010 and 132.015 if you don't read out all 6 digits?

FWIW this was not a NATS specific instruction but a CAA one in accordance with the Eurocontrol plan for 8.33 frequency spacing.

Back to topic........ we tried PRAWNS but it didn't work for us so we switched to WEST - works better and has certainly led to a standardisation of handovers. I can still recall one controller who used to say 'it's a lovely day the traf is.....' That controller is now an SRG Inspector :}

DD

PS: Surely PRAWNS, WEST or whatever are Mneumonics not acronyms?

DD

They're a bit of both aren't they?

any other rules that people don't bother with because they think that they don't need to apply them?:)

acronym (noun)
an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word


mnemonic (noun)
a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations which assists in remembering something

To me PRAWNS is an acronym. It never assisted me to remember what it stood for. But the written checklist did...

I suppose if folk hadn't been having incidents because of stuff being forgotten in handovers there wouldn't have been any need...

got it in one Roffa:)

zkdli, I accept that I'm not perfect unlike some of the others here seem to think they are :)

Roffa

Nobody is disputing that things can get missed on a handover and a checklist is required, but...

...can you tell me why the checklist has to spell anything, and why every sector has to have the same handover?

I wasn't involved in creating PRAWNS, though I knew the man who was, so have no idea why that particular acronym/mnemonic was used. I suppose PRAWNS is easier to remember than say WNSRAP. Though that may be moot if it's written down in front of you anyway.

I think the point though is that a consistently structured handover is a good idea.

If you have a better suggestion for a particular sector/group... make it known to those who deal with this sort of thing.

I just wondered how we ever coped for 40 years before PRAWNS when "24 for landing; BEAline follws the frog, tricky old wind... got it??" seemed to work?

The point is it didn't work HD, there were incidents due to incomplete/inadequate handovers. I assume there are less since the introduction of PRAWNS else it would not have stuck.

But anyway, you've been out of it a long time and much has changed in the intervening years. Just consider yourself fortunate to be so and don't worry yourself too much about what happens now.

"Blues out, buffs in and the gays are in pink, got it, bye" :eek:

Except in VHHH where its "Blues in, buffs out etc" Go figure. :rolleyes:

Roffa... I'm far from worried about these things; just curious. Judging from the PMs I get, people seem to be interested in my views, no matter how out-dated they appear! Level busts, runway incursions, PRAWNS - all unheard of 40 years ago but I'm not denying that problems do occur now... just curious as to why?