Obtaining NOTAMs
 

Hi there. I'm back to flying having had a bit of a break and trying to scrape the rust off....

I know this question will doubtless horrify some people, but where do I go to find and understand NOTAMs easily these days?

I remember all the mess when they were changing the systems over. Do people still use programmes like NotamPro etc?

Many thanks.

AIS You will have to register but it is free.

NotamPro does still work - you download the 'Pre-prepared PIB' on the left side of the AIS website window. And they've just agreed to add the Q line, so it should be back to its old self.

Tim

How robust are these "notam plotting" programs in detecting invalid coordinate pairs?

That's the reason I avoid them.

Most of the complex coordinate pairs that appear are NAVW category and most of those cannot be usefully acted upon; they are non-mandatory avoidance, and flying activity can be anywhere anyway.

Consider NOTAMPlot, which gets its data from a free "Guest" subscription to AvBrief.

Ian Fallon, the author has done an excellent job. The download is free, but he des ask users to consider a donation to some suggested charities.

Like all these programs, not all NOTAMs can be graphically displayed. However most are, and those that aren't are clearly identified so you can check relevance. Reduces the possibility of error immensely.

I've seen some of these programs - can't remember which - plot nonsensical shapes, using lat/long pairs which contain silly human input errors. That's why I asked. Algorithmically, it's tough to detect such errors.

Thats certainly true, but they do a much better job than my hand efforts which contain my errors as well as any in the source material.

It seems some pilots just ignore these geographic exercise warnings, and it's true that the controlling military authority sometimes say "what exercise?" when asked about traffic on the radio, but I find Ian Fallon's program invaluable in alerting me to the potential for conflicts in the open FIR.

(One of these notams once advertised a 'US carrier battle group with intensive flying operations' right along my track in the Western Approaches. Excited, I made sure the camera was primed. "What aircraft carrier?" St Mawgan said. "But it's in the notams!" I protested. "Oh" they said, disinterested. "We don't have any reports of that". Turned out the yanks had cancelled their courtesy call in Dublin for some reason).