AFPEX problems
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
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From: EuroGA.org
I also suspect that the very poor standard of VFR FPL's in the UK (not of course by you dear reader) might have had a bearing. Because VFR plans were simply faxed to the destination and did not enter the AFTN the non-conformities to ICAO standards did not cause a problem. Those who have been filing IFR through CFMU will be well aware of the need for higher standards of production.
Worth mentioning that the inability to use 4 letter a/d designators in a route (much derided by the proponents of Olivia) is an absolute requirement for any system for submitting FPL as 4 letter designators are not valid in an ICAO FPL route.
Worth mentioning that the inability to use 4 letter a/d designators in a route (much derided by the proponents of Olivia) is an absolute requirement for any system for submitting FPL as 4 letter designators are not valid in an ICAO FPL route.
The FP is just an AFTN message and nobody cares what it contains. You could file a VFR FP with waypoint called "Samantha Fox" and the system would transmit it to the specified addresses, just fine
IFR flight plans are validated by Eurocontrol, which is nothing to do with the issue here. Eurocontrol do this because IFR FPs are addressed to them and to nobody else, and they re-distribute them to the units along the filed route.
It is rather academic now but I cannot help wondering why electronic FP filing has taken so long.
Regarding AFPEx, I think people should disregard the negative press which is all over the forums, from a small number of individuals who for the most part, as far as I can see, have difficulty with the internet and "IT" generally. The system has its faults (like the big Java download, and no feedback on IFR slots, and the Java app does not run on some/most non-windoze computers) but it works really well otherwise. I really like the way the message is sent instantly and, on IFR FPs, the feedback is similarly instant.
It is unfortunate that the PPL training process does not prepare people for the fact that practically everything connected with flying has gone to the internet and that their lives will be a lot easier if they get up the learning curve.
Last edited by IO540; 4th August 2009 at 16:43.
Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 399
Likes: 0
From: suffolk
I am one of the people that have trouble with I.T.
I admit it .I'm hopeless at it .
I hate it with a vengance.
I can fly an aeroplane,I have been doing so for 30 odd years.
I have experience on many types and have owned nearly 80 aircraft over the years.
Every two years I get my licence revalidated..I do not have to prove to the instructor/examiner that I can operate a computer, nor did I take any exams in IT to get my licence.
I can use a phone.
Once I escape these shores, I can use a phone to file a flightplan right accross europe, I even have the numbers in my phone memory.
So why does have to be so bloody hard here?
Can anyone tell me if I can phone France (for example) and file a flightplan FROM the uk?
I admit it .I'm hopeless at it .
I hate it with a vengance.
I can fly an aeroplane,I have been doing so for 30 odd years.
I have experience on many types and have owned nearly 80 aircraft over the years.
Every two years I get my licence revalidated..I do not have to prove to the instructor/examiner that I can operate a computer, nor did I take any exams in IT to get my licence.
I can use a phone.
Once I escape these shores, I can use a phone to file a flightplan right accross europe, I even have the numbers in my phone memory.
So why does have to be so bloody hard here?
Can anyone tell me if I can phone France (for example) and file a flightplan FROM the uk?
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
hatzflyer
I think you have written this on other forums too.
May I suggest this in an entirely constructive spirit: would you like to meet up with somebody who can take you through using a laptop?
If you can fly a plane, get weather (how do you get weather without the internet?), get notams (likewise?) but cannot use a laptop, you cannot be that far away from being able to do the whole lot.
Once you get Afpex set up, it is really very easy.
I think you have written this on other forums too.
May I suggest this in an entirely constructive spirit: would you like to meet up with somebody who can take you through using a laptop?
If you can fly a plane, get weather (how do you get weather without the internet?), get notams (likewise?) but cannot use a laptop, you cannot be that far away from being able to do the whole lot.
Once you get Afpex set up, it is really very easy.
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
Excellent 
Make sure you can get mobile internet using GPRS/3G; this means either connecting to a bluetooth capable mobile phone (using bluetooth), or getting a GPRS/3G modem (which normally connects via USB). The first option is preferred because you have just one SIM card to worry about.
Make sure you can get mobile internet using GPRS/3G; this means either connecting to a bluetooth capable mobile phone (using bluetooth), or getting a GPRS/3G modem (which normally connects via USB). The first option is preferred because you have just one SIM card to worry about.
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 20
Likes: 0
From: West Berkshire
Is anyone having problems connecting to the NATS AIS Site with a Vodafone 3G Mobile Broadband?
I keep getting the no further than the front page, any pages below comes up with a page error.
Not a problem on the same computer on fixed based broadband or any other Mobile Broadband dongle, so only Vodafone 3G Mobile is the problem as far I can tell.
No reponse from Vodafone yet to my call on their problem page.
I keep getting the no further than the front page, any pages below comes up with a page error.
Not a problem on the same computer on fixed based broadband or any other Mobile Broadband dongle, so only Vodafone 3G Mobile is the problem as far I can tell.
No reponse from Vodafone yet to my call on their problem page.
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 228
Likes: 5
From: London, UK
BTW, one interpretation of Fred Hunt's comment as quoted here is that some part of the system is contractually licensed to a limit and that the limit is too low to support the next batch of new users for the system. That limit may related to the number of total/active/concurrent users of the system or some other more loosely related quantity.
Commercial software or components within are often sold on the basis of some licensed limit. This is often lower than the hardware resources could support. Regular Pprune users will be familiar with busy periods were some users are denied access to the messageboard to preserve access for others!
Commercial software or components within are often sold on the basis of some licensed limit. This is often lower than the hardware resources could support. Regular Pprune users will be familiar with busy periods were some users are denied access to the messageboard to preserve access for others!
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 187
Likes: 0
From: Ireland
Originally Posted by Katamarino
Any feedback from the evening with NATS yesterday?
AFPEX= The biggest pile of !!!!e except from what can be found behind an Elephant, thankfully we still can fax 01489 612793 and can use the old style form.
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 187
Likes: 0
From: Ireland
Originally Posted by DublinPilot
Jonkil,
Were you able to get an AFPEX account in Ireland? Of do you have a sneeky CAA licence/UK address?
Were you able to get an AFPEX account in Ireland? Of do you have a sneeky CAA licence/UK address?
Just hate the bloody AFPEX interface, more into flying than IT.
Jon
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
I sense that Afpex has become a kind of "bashing" issue, just like Mode S became a "CAA bashing" issue.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs, people rally behind easily identifiable causes
The real issue with Afpex, in most (not all) situations, is that many UK pilots are not up to speed with the internet and the most basic IT skills.
Weather moved de facto to the internet a few years ago, but it is still possible for an IT-phobic person to get away without it. Most people do local burger runs only and one can get the weather off the TV, and by looking out of the window.
Notams moved totally to the internet c. 2003 (unless one flies local burger runs, and hangs around a club where local area notams are pinned to the board each morning) but many or most pilots don't get notams, and for burger runs they usually get away with it.
Flight plan filing can still be done by handing the FP in the tower, and other methods, but flyers who don't fly from a towered airfield, and have no fax facility are now stuffed. They will have to use the internet. I suspect this has caught a lot of the most "traditional" pilots, who have thus far managed without any technology, but now cannot fly to LTQ because that needs a flight plan filed.
It's time to get a laptop with mobile (GPRS/3G) internet and move into the 21st century. Life is so much easier. You can get weather, notams, all kinds of stuff, very easily and conveniently. You will never look back.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs, people rally behind easily identifiable causes
The real issue with Afpex, in most (not all) situations, is that many UK pilots are not up to speed with the internet and the most basic IT skills.
Weather moved de facto to the internet a few years ago, but it is still possible for an IT-phobic person to get away without it. Most people do local burger runs only and one can get the weather off the TV, and by looking out of the window.
Notams moved totally to the internet c. 2003 (unless one flies local burger runs, and hangs around a club where local area notams are pinned to the board each morning) but many or most pilots don't get notams, and for burger runs they usually get away with it.
Flight plan filing can still be done by handing the FP in the tower, and other methods, but flyers who don't fly from a towered airfield, and have no fax facility are now stuffed. They will have to use the internet. I suspect this has caught a lot of the most "traditional" pilots, who have thus far managed without any technology, but now cannot fly to LTQ because that needs a flight plan filed.
It's time to get a laptop with mobile (GPRS/3G) internet and move into the 21st century. Life is so much easier. You can get weather, notams, all kinds of stuff, very easily and conveniently. You will never look back.
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 187
Likes: 0
From: Ireland
Naw, think I'll pass...... have a few contacts in Shannon that I can ring, files them for me every time, no problem, and this works worldwide!!!... this system never had a "boot problem".... costs me a few bottles of Jameson whiskey at Christmas to keep this "handy arrangement"!!.. same with all walks of life, business or otherwise, its a lot about who you know, and less to do with what you know.
KISS system, hard to beat.
Tally ho.
Jon.
KISS system, hard to beat.
Tally ho.
Jon.
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,547
Likes: 0
From: Dublin
Airfield based in Ireland, but just inside the FIR boundary in the UK side. Licence is UK NPPL.
Just hate the bloody AFPEX interface, more into flying than IT.
Jon
Just hate the bloody AFPEX interface, more into flying than IT.
Jon
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 2,547
Likes: 0
From: Dublin
I sense that Afpex has become a kind of "bashing" issue, just like Mode S became a "CAA bashing" issue.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs, people rally behind easily identifiable causes
The real issue with Afpex, in most (not all) situations, is that many UK pilots are not up to speed with the internet and the most basic IT skills.
Regardless of the rights or wrongs, people rally behind easily identifiable causes
The real issue with Afpex, in most (not all) situations, is that many UK pilots are not up to speed with the internet and the most basic IT skills.
Pilots are simply not trainned to address flight plans, and have little knowledge of it.
It's also something that should be extrememly easy to computerise. You've only got three pieces of information:
Departure Airport
Arrival Airport
FIR's crossed.
Each of these has a set of addresses that are required to be addressed. Why can't the software simply have a list of them, and insert them automatically based on the information supplied?
I think that would solve 95% of the complaints.
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
I would agree to some extent; not totally.
I don't think the FP addressing is a huge issue, because IMHO most of the time it doesn't really matter if you get or don't get every possible FIR in there.
It is trivial to address it to the departure, destination and (some say this is unnecessary but I disagree, for some countries) the alternate. That's 2 or 3 addresses and they are obvious e.g. LFAT or whatever followed by ZTZX.
It is similarly trivial to select the FIR addresses from the pulldown menu.
It is the weird special cases (some of which are in the pulldown menu and some aren't) which have been apparently taxing people e.g. flight plans to Blackbushe having to be addressed to Farnborough also.
But I see no evidence that anybody actually cares about these. If the FP goes to the departure ARO then you can depart. If it goes to the destination ARO then you can land. If it goes to the FIR(s) in between then they will know about you as you fly enroute. Does Farnborough actually care about getting FPs for Blackbushe??? Both places are in Class G. This stuff has to be meaningless.
Especially as we are talking about VFR; 99% of UK pilots are not going to fly to Mongolia (or even places like Albania who may well get funny about some stupid detail); they fly to places like France who only just barely care and have never been known to turn somebody away at the FIR boundary because they cannot find their FP..
The major issue with Afpex is the ~ 4MB application download. They have to stop this, and make it optional, using an announcement (on their website or with a pop-up) that a new version with new features is available. It has been said recently that this issue will be fixed soon. One can avoid the repetitive download by using the laptop's Hibernation feature, together with not exiting the Afpex application and leaving it running; this has worked for me for a couple of months at a time (until I forgot and did a full reboot and then had to do a total reload
). This download makes the system totally unusable over GPRS which is the major "mobile internet" system in Europe; 3G coverage is still poor in many areas.
The other issue with Afpex is the lack of feedback like SMS/email notifications of IFR slots, but this doesn't affect most GA pilots (cannot get slots in VFR) and IFR pilots have tended to be "mobile/internet" for some time because it is the only practical way to fly.
There are plenty of other "would be a lot nicer" things like why is it a java app and not a straight HTTPS website (which could be used in an internet cafe, etc), and there are loads of features in there which are not required by most pilots and which could be stripped out. There are some weird dependencies on the java runtime version although I have not been able to replicate these (I use Afpex only for FP filing and for AFTN messages for PPR/PNR purposes) but they would be due to poor programming practices.
I think that Afpex has dragged out a lot of pilots who have somehow managed - until now - to scrape through without using the internet, and in many cases without any preflight briefing whatever. The powers to be, having been running the Notam system wholly on the internet for 6-7 years, probably assumed that the GA community is by now up to speed with the internet, and moved FP filing to it too (making big payroll cost savings in the FBUs who in recent years were filing mostly just GA-VFR flight plans). I suspect they - as most of "us" - did not realise just how many pilots never use the internet, or (for the farm strip flyers) do not have the knowledge to purchase a laptop with mobile internet on it.
Afpex is actually a damn good tool. After you got the thing started, knocking up a flight plan is as fast as you can type it in (minutes), and it is delivered to all addresses within seconds of pressing the Send button. No messing about with filing something through some tower and then twiddling one's fingers for an hour while somebody hundreds of miles away manually re-types it into an AFTN terminal. For IFR flight plans it is brilliant and you get the ACK (or rejection) message back in seconds - nothing comes close. The AFTN messages can be used for PNR/PPR communications (they work slightly better than faxing); recently I planned a number of trips to N French airports and most of them were "Customs PNR". AND IT IS FREE UK GA should rejoice
I have a homebriefing.com account too but use it rather less nowadays. Afpex is free, it is quicker to use, you get instant feedback, and the internet data usage is a lot lower than Homebriefing's which is pretty siginficant when using roaming 3G. Rather perversely, I use Homebriefing when doing short trips on which I carry a tiny EEE laptop/netbook which doesn't have enough HD space to support Hibernation.
Very true, but they are not trained to do a lot of stuff which they need to know to fly usefully from A to B, like using the NATS website to get notams via the narrow route briefing (which is actually pretty good). GA flight training is pretty crap at the "operational stuff", at both VFR and IFR (IR) levels.
I don't think the FP addressing is a huge issue, because IMHO most of the time it doesn't really matter if you get or don't get every possible FIR in there.
It is trivial to address it to the departure, destination and (some say this is unnecessary but I disagree, for some countries) the alternate. That's 2 or 3 addresses and they are obvious e.g. LFAT or whatever followed by ZTZX.
It is similarly trivial to select the FIR addresses from the pulldown menu.
It is the weird special cases (some of which are in the pulldown menu and some aren't) which have been apparently taxing people e.g. flight plans to Blackbushe having to be addressed to Farnborough also.
But I see no evidence that anybody actually cares about these. If the FP goes to the departure ARO then you can depart. If it goes to the destination ARO then you can land. If it goes to the FIR(s) in between then they will know about you as you fly enroute. Does Farnborough actually care about getting FPs for Blackbushe??? Both places are in Class G. This stuff has to be meaningless.
Especially as we are talking about VFR; 99% of UK pilots are not going to fly to Mongolia (or even places like Albania who may well get funny about some stupid detail); they fly to places like France who only just barely care and have never been known to turn somebody away at the FIR boundary because they cannot find their FP..
The major issue with Afpex is the ~ 4MB application download. They have to stop this, and make it optional, using an announcement (on their website or with a pop-up) that a new version with new features is available. It has been said recently that this issue will be fixed soon. One can avoid the repetitive download by using the laptop's Hibernation feature, together with not exiting the Afpex application and leaving it running; this has worked for me for a couple of months at a time (until I forgot and did a full reboot and then had to do a total reload
). This download makes the system totally unusable over GPRS which is the major "mobile internet" system in Europe; 3G coverage is still poor in many areas.The other issue with Afpex is the lack of feedback like SMS/email notifications of IFR slots, but this doesn't affect most GA pilots (cannot get slots in VFR) and IFR pilots have tended to be "mobile/internet" for some time because it is the only practical way to fly.
There are plenty of other "would be a lot nicer" things like why is it a java app and not a straight HTTPS website (which could be used in an internet cafe, etc), and there are loads of features in there which are not required by most pilots and which could be stripped out. There are some weird dependencies on the java runtime version although I have not been able to replicate these (I use Afpex only for FP filing and for AFTN messages for PPR/PNR purposes) but they would be due to poor programming practices.
I think that Afpex has dragged out a lot of pilots who have somehow managed - until now - to scrape through without using the internet, and in many cases without any preflight briefing whatever. The powers to be, having been running the Notam system wholly on the internet for 6-7 years, probably assumed that the GA community is by now up to speed with the internet, and moved FP filing to it too (making big payroll cost savings in the FBUs who in recent years were filing mostly just GA-VFR flight plans). I suspect they - as most of "us" - did not realise just how many pilots never use the internet, or (for the farm strip flyers) do not have the knowledge to purchase a laptop with mobile internet on it.
Afpex is actually a damn good tool. After you got the thing started, knocking up a flight plan is as fast as you can type it in (minutes), and it is delivered to all addresses within seconds of pressing the Send button. No messing about with filing something through some tower and then twiddling one's fingers for an hour while somebody hundreds of miles away manually re-types it into an AFTN terminal. For IFR flight plans it is brilliant and you get the ACK (or rejection) message back in seconds - nothing comes close. The AFTN messages can be used for PNR/PPR communications (they work slightly better than faxing); recently I planned a number of trips to N French airports and most of them were "Customs PNR". AND IT IS FREE
UK GA should rejoice I have a homebriefing.com account too but use it rather less nowadays. Afpex is free, it is quicker to use, you get instant feedback, and the internet data usage is a lot lower than Homebriefing's which is pretty siginficant when using roaming 3G. Rather perversely, I use Homebriefing when doing short trips on which I carry a tiny EEE laptop/netbook which doesn't have enough HD space to support Hibernation.
Pilots are simply not trainned to address flight plans, and have little knowledge of it.
Last edited by IO540; 20th August 2009 at 06:37.
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 187
Likes: 0
From: Ireland
If the guys at NATS took a look at the French Olivia system and designed their interface around it then issues like this would be avoided.
The Olivia system is browser based, loads instantly, no fort Knox security and simple to use. it is a great interface, and the most illiterate IT person could use it.
The Olivia system is browser based, loads instantly, no fort Knox security and simple to use. it is a great interface, and the most illiterate IT person could use it.
