BRL, nice one.

You may want to point them at www.flyontrack.co.uk as well -- there's some fairly interesting comments appearing there :(

NATS, Grrrrrr
 

This NATS AIC, AIS website is driving me me up the F*^*^*G wall,

Have they stopped you viewing/printing the IAP, STAR, SIDs etc because I cannot, for the life of me find them.

Also, why is it so bloody sloooooow.

ANGRY:mad: :mad: :mad:

Let me get this straight..
Your not happy with the new improved, easy to use, need a computer degree to get the NOTAMS website are you?
Tsk Tsk some people dont like change
Walt,,:D

The SIDs, STARs etc are under Publications, UK AIP Supplements, UK AIP, Aerodrome Data, Aerodromes Specific.

Only takes about 5 mins to get there zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

PS What's the problem with accessing the site from outside the UK? Will it automatically cancel my JAA licence if I try?

That'll be the site I couldn't manage to get to work last week, thus nearly (bar the vigilance of a reasonably switched on air trafficer) had me flying into the middle of a military airshow. That one?

G

Phild

Don't know what I was doing wrong last night, I was asked for a specific airfield I wanted info on, when I entered which one , all I got was a list of all the SIDs etc and not the actual plate.

Havn't tried the Notam function yet, so I will keep the noose slack :(

LPL

Guys, quick request

Can we keep all the AIS Site stuff in the Notam Site 'Upgrade' thread, because we're pointing quite a few people directly at it now and wouldn't want them to miss anything ;)

Just a thought :)

Cheers Rus.... going to copy this/merge it with the other thread. :)

Finally got into AIS site today- after registering 4 times, recieving no confirmation email !
Just looking over the forms at the moment, see how many 'irrelevant' notams it gives me!

Spotted this on a newsgroup, Ben Chapman has put together a simpler and faster interface to the AIS site:

http://www.benchapman.co.uk/preflight/altais/

Opens another window for the AIS site on login, then go back to Ben's window and carry out your query there, swap back to the AIS window for the results.

Gave up and went home
 

Tried to fly last Wednesday. Couldn't get a password to access the site, no one at my club was able to access the system or aparently aware of the change! Rang the tower who directed me to the briefing room in the main terminal.

Couldn't find the NOTAMs in the briefing room - asked someone who very kindly went and found them for me somewhere in the office. I found them completely unrecognisable (In my innocence I was expecting them to be ordered by lon/lat!).

After pondering over them for some time I decided to cancel the flight. I could not guarentee that I wouldn't wander across a TRA and at best end up in court or at worst be shot down. My friend who had traveled some distance was most p**sed off - but perhaps not as p**sed off as I would have been if I had inadvertantly endangered myself, my friend, other flyers or folks on the ground.

I wonder how many flyers have said "****** it - I'll fly anyway"?

And now the site is COMPLETELY down!!!
 

The AIS website is, as I type this, offline. Test using this traceroute server indicate that ... "IP packets are being lost past network "Nats (Services) Ltd" at hop 21 ... Connections to HTTP port 80 are being refused". Seems they have taken it offline for the afternoon for some reason.....

Is it asking too much to hope that the reason it's down is so that they can put the old system back again???

FFF
--------------

I tried to use it yesterday for a trip to the MIdlands today. I couldn't get it to work so I rang NATS and they were extremely helpful. They answered the phone immediately and spent some time trying to get it to work. Eventually they rang me back and then helped me to get it to work. (60% of resultant NOTAMS were irrelevant for my flight as others have found).

The only justification he could offer for this poor system was that it was free:confused: :confused:

Does this mean that they will charge for it when it works better?

FFF,

According to NATS that isn't possible - see AOPA news story.

But then NATS said the temp user-ID and password would work until 20 September as well ;)

Pulse1,

Did they mean free to them, or free to the users?

... and now its back up again... but seems the same functionaly, yet possbly slower..?

What a total shambles..............and on top of everything else, the format of dates has been altered - beware - if it says 02/09/03, it means 3rd September 2002 and not 2nd September 2003.

Here's the URL for the AOPA news item:

http://www.aopa.co.uk/cgi-bin/viewne...31140546,4618,

It's titled "AIS: New Web Service has GA Pilots Seeing Red"

The confusing bit is this quote:

"AIS will not be going back to the old way of providing NOTAM information via the web because it was too labour intensive..."

So which bit is the labour intensive bit?

Where the LAT/LONG is added as in the A1/A8s? (Which are still produced, just not available to GA pilots!)

Or maybe it's labour intensive to point a URL at the A1/A8 data, which is obviously still in electronic form.

Any thoughts anyone?

Useless.

The AOPA guard dog, having emitted a half-hearted yap, has been fed a biscuit and has slunk away.

It's all very well for AOPA to be "re-assured to know that AIS is taking all constructive comments seriously."

Are they satisfied that anything at all will be done to improve things? This is an issue with profound safety implications for us all. How long is an acceptable period for NOTAMS to be this hard to get at? Another week? A month? Six months?

I hope that some of the flying magazines can do a better job of defending our interests than AOPA.

www.ais.org.uk - Site Down
 

... again this morning.