What? No D and D?
 

Having a few minutes to kill, I flicked through issue 05 of "Pulse" - the superb corporate communications journal of NATS. Wonderful publication - soft, strong and highly absorbent! Page 3 had a topless....... no, sorry, wrong one. Page 3 had an article covering the ditching of a Cessna303 in the North Sea and went on to congratulate, and rightly so, all the personnel on V watch for their swift actions. No mention of any activity from Distress and Diversion. Do D and D still do things like alert the Rescue Coordination Centre so that SAR can be scrambled or do NATS staff do that themselves? I understand that D and D is manned by RAF personnel - could that be why they didn't get a mention in a NATS publication?

D&D (or A&FC under the new parlance :) ) would have carried out all their normal activities as they have executive control of emergencies (as opposed to operational control) and informed the ARCC. Just business as usual for D&D which probably explains why no mention in Pulse.

BD

D&D did indeed just do their usual activity. If they blew their own trumpet every time they were involved in such an emergency (eg the Tornado GR4 into Holbeach a couple of weeks back), we would rapidly yawn.

BD, regarding A&FC, you are of course correct that the facility will be called A&FC (God only knows why the name was changed) but the RAF will continue to man with personnel from D&D Flt. I'm pretty sure I know what they will continue to call themselves. :)

LM


I may be operating in thick mode (as usual) but what does the acronym A&FC stand for?

David R

Alerting & Fixing Cell which, if memory serves, is very similar to what it used to be called before Death & Destruction ;)

BD

SwanFIS

Thanks for asking the question we were all wondering about!

London Mil

Have we missed something? Has the RAF gone public on this yet? Is there a reference? I notice that it was still referred to as D&D in a recent ATSIN.

2 s

The new A&FC cell is being completed at Swanwick ready for the move of London Mil down there next year. Thats where the name change arises :) Sorry for any confusion.

BD

Beady Eye, yes good point about D and D blowing their own trumpet. What I was trying to highlight was that the article in Pulse was written as if no one else but V watch of NATS was involved from an ATC perspective. I'm sure the boys and girls in D and D would echo that "it's all part of the job", but it wouldn't have done them, or the editors of Pulse, any harm if they got a mention outside of any RAF publications.

<shrug> In my 6 years experience of being a D&D controller I had only one 'mention' for assisting an aircraft in distress and that was a letter to my boss from SRG (was a civil not a military aircraft). Far as I was concerned it was all part of the job and I never expected any recognition outside of being paid to do it ;) Dunno what London Mil and other current D&D controllers think though.

BD

Quite right too - they don't have to go OTT, just give a mention of others who were involved. q.v. It would have been of interest to mention that on its first visit to the UK, the A380 made several low approaches at Hawarden and Bristol Filton before going on to land at Heathrow.

From the way I understand it, the A+FC is a temporary acronym that is being used here at Swanwick to prevent confusion between the 2 active D&D cells and the new D&D cell being constructed in nPC (if you look at the nPC pictures on NATSnet it een shows a picture of the new D&D cell under construction)

The room at Swanwick is in iteslf complete, and is now having it's radio and radar kit fitted. Of interest, is the DF laser board is being replaced with a mahoosive plasma screen. (night shift take note, bring your xbox 360 to work :E )

To clarify, as far as the military are concerned, D&D will continue to call themselves D&D when on landline/telephone etc, even after moving to Swanwick. Part of the rationale behind name changes (ie the introduction of the term A&FC) is so that the projects chaps don't get confused. You could just imagine someone talking about a problem in D&D when the problem was actually in an empty room some 100 miles down the road. Hence, A&FC is set in tablets of stone as far as contracts are concerned. How the customer chooses to operate within the boudaries of the solution (the Contract), is a matter for the customer. :\

You're quite correct in that the customer chooses what they do with the kit provided (within the constraints of what the kit can do). Name will not be to prevent confusion (IMHO) as NAS, CCDS and EDDUS are all moving to Swanwick next year and although slight name changes are used to differentiate (SwEDDUS for Swanwick EDDUS as an example) theres no confusion. I could well be wrong (Because A&FC is not a project I'm involved in) but I believe HQ STC chose A&FC and thats how it'll be used in future. Standing by to be corrected by one of the project team now :)

BD

Yes the aircraft was tranferred to 121.5 & "controlled" by D&D for his descent into the sea.
Yes we did all our usual stuff.

No it didnt warrant us transmitting to the world we had done so.... usual stuff:)

Diddley Dee

Is that next year, or the year after? I've just read the latest Barron-o-gram...:O

The Swanwick EDDUS will not be called SwEDDUS it is just a working name generated by some clever bloke :) in the project to save confusion in some docs.

You are correct that the A&FC nomenclature came from HQ STC and it is the term used in the NATS/MOD contract, but I guess I may have to provide power for the D&D sign before O date

Next year 2007 (provided they can get a NAS processor to Swanwick without dropping it off the back of the lorry ;) ) You might be thinking about CASPIAN which is nothing to do with NAS et al. Or the newly new New Prestwick Centre, which has nothing to do with CASPIAN either ;)

BD

A clever ginga? It'll never happen ;)
Goldfish power, its the only way ;-)
BD