Brize ILS
 

I heard a Voyager recently holding for weather improvement at Brize. Wx just below CatI, about CatII.
The Voyager/A330 comes CatIIIC equipped 'out of the box' from the factory, as presumably the A400.
Is our premier RAF transport airfield not equipped for low vis procedures/CatIII ILS?

It may well be that the aircraft was full Cat III but the crew were not qualified or not current to carry out a Cat III approach.

Cat III /low vis operations are part of the normal A330 Conversion . Crews qualified in the Sim. A few practice landings down route and you're done?
Perhaps the RAF only train to CatI. Seems a waste of modern technology, with for example, all the disruptions caused by fog etc.

Short answer to your question cessnapete-NO.

Years ago, the northern perimeter road was relocated as a prelude to upgrading the aerodrome infrastructure to cater for TriStar LVPs and autolands.

Then someone realised that local topography, roads and other features would also need to be taken into account - which was deemed to be a very expensive move, given the relative infrequency of the need to work below Cat 1 limits...

There've been various warnings about the Brize ILS in recent NOTAMs, so its use below Cat 1 would be doubtful - I don't know whether the TAP shows lower than Cat 1 limits though, as these days MoD's contribution to Air Safety is to hide the milAIP behind a paywall...:hmm:

To fly below cat I minima you need:

A suitably equipped aircraft

A suitably equipped airfield

A suitably qualified crew

An organisation with appropriate training manual and performance monitoring programming

Approval from the regulator for all the above.

The last is I suspect the problem. EASA regulations for below Cat I approached amounts to a massive manual (PART-LVO). Military regs from a quick search through the MAA...Zip, zilch. You cannot approve something you don't regulate. It might happen through another means that's not public of course

Not being aircrew, I don't fully understand the EASA and Military terminology, however is the link below to RA2307 relevant to the subject, if not apologies for the intrusion.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...07_Issue_7.pdf

That's Rules of the Air which I don't think hits the spot for this thread. It's all about what's not there. There is a few things in the RA1300 series which covers related topics, just not Low Visibility Operations - doing Cat II/III approaches (eg PBN and RVSM - GPS navigation and accurate altimeters in (very) simple terms)

Thanks GipsyMagpie for letting me know, I just thought IMC was another description for low visibility flying and that was the only RA in the series (other than the gliding section) that mentioned it, but as I said apologies for the intrusion.

Autolands and Brize....did someone mention Tristars😱

They can always do like these guys, divert to the continent (in this case divert from Mildenhall to Brussels)
http://www.luchtzak.be/forums/download/file.php?id=7158

The above picture puts some truth in the story of a plane landing on a runway that the pilots thought to be very short .... but boy, was it wide :ok:

Cat D RVR appears to be 800. Given the prevailing viz about 150m recently I can see the problem...

A330 is a Cat C ac.

Cat C RVR the same, apols as I was relying on a former A320 FO sitting next to me...

So was the Tristar nearly after the Autoland incident mentioned earlier :E

Does FIDO not work these days?

I'll get me coat!

Was FIDO ever installed at Brize? I know it was at Manston and Blackbushe - you can still see the channels next to the runway at the latter.
I would have thought that with all those wooden gliders at Brize, it wouldn't have been advisable!!

Brize if memory serves me correctly, I was told, had an electrically heated all weather runway, the USAF put it in at great expense then tried to sell it to the UK when they handed it back, U.K. Plc thought well we will get it anyway so refused to cough up for it.
The USAF then drove a caterpillar with its ground cutting blade dropped down the side of the runway tearing all the wiring to the heaters out, thus rendering the system scrap and denying the RAF a freebie.
Similar they offered all the American fridges and furniture etc from the quarters for free, however the tax man wanted the tax paying on it all, so rather than get something for free from the USAF, and facing a bill, they dug a pit, crushed it and buried it all.

Was FIDO ever installed at Brize?

I don't think so - it was mostly for Bomber Command and the three emergency runways (Manston, Carnaby and Woodbridge). I believe that Brize was primarily an aircraft storage unit, so it was unlikely to see landings in poor vis.

Presumably good for melting snow and ice, but of little or no benefit to fog dispersal?

During the latter part of WW2, it was a massive glider pilot training school too.
As I said, there was definitely FIDO at Blackbushe, last lit in the '50s I think with some of the open channels for the burners still existing.

At risk of a bit of thread drift, but hopefully the Mods will be tolerant, there is an excellent book about FIDO: Flying Through Fire, by Geoffrey Williams, from which I have cribbed this list of UK FIDO equipped airfields:

Blackbushe
Bradwell Bay
Carnaby
Downham Market
Fiskerton
Foulsham
Graveley
Ludford Magna
Manston
Melbourne
Metheringham
St Eval
Sturgate
Tuddenham
Woodbridge

Hope this is of interest.

In fact I've discovered a Pathe News clip dated 1952 showing it being tested.
www.blackbusheairport.proboards.com in the section entitled 'Any movie clips Blackbushe related welcome'

Some testing was done in I think Queen Mary reservoir west of what is now Heathrow. In the early part of WW2 dad was in the AFS/NFS and was on fire cover for the tests

chevvron's link is broken - try this

Fog.. | Blackbushe Airport - The one-stop Forum

Well it was 3.30am!
I've corrected it now.

The 26 Cat 1 ILS was quite good enough for a Tristar autoland, if done correctly. It wasn't cleared of course. What was really dangerous, in my opinion, was the requirement to disengage the autopilots at 200ft/DH. On disengagement, the autopilot inserted a safety pitch up. Just what you need when all you have for visual reference is 2 bars of lighting!

More FIDO digression:

Marham was a FIDO station. Trials of FIDO Mk2 (burning kerosene) were being conducted as late as 1959 - presumably for the V Bombers, which also had the very first operational auto-land system in the Leader Cable. The fuel farm that used to be just North of the 24 Threshold was the original tank system for FIDO and was sometimes referred to as "The FIDO Farm".