Day 10

NOTAM: A notice to airmen (and women).

As I drive down the M3 and M27 each day to Bournemouth from Basingstoke, I am impressed with the new electronic notice boards that have appeared, telling you how many miles and minutes it will take to get to Newbury, for example, or reminding you to 'Take extra care at Roadworks'. Of course these are also extremely useful for conveying urgent information about congestion, accidents or any other problem on the roads.

But how do you alert pilots to problems such as a low-flying aerobatic display, a change of frequency or an airfield that is unexpectedly closed? After all there are no matrix boards in the sky?

For many years now NOTAMs have been the primary means for news concerning hazards or abnormal situations at airports or in the enroute phase of flying. NOTAMs previously were transmitted to airfields by telex or fax. Of course nowadays a pilot can log on to the internet and view all the NOTAMs pertinent to their flight. If you'd have done that today for a flight to or from Bournemouth you'd have discovered the following NOTAM:

AERODROME (DEPARTURE) - EGHH (BOURNEMOUTH HURN) :
RAC : Q)EGTT/QSPLT/IV/BO/AE/000/999/5047N00151W005
     FROM 08/03/24 17:30 TO 08/03/25 21:00             
     E)NO RADAR SERVICE AVBL DUE RADAR U/S

Basically this means that the radar was broken at Bournemouth from yesterday evening to this evening. Actually another NOTAM has since been issued, saying that the radar will not be working tomorrow morning either.

As a result, as I left the M3 and joined the M27 this morning my instructor left a message to say that there would be no flying for us today. Without the radar, Bournemouth Air Traffic Control were unwilling to offer any circuit training, and unfortunately the next two sorties for me will include circuits. So I turned around at the next exit and was back in Basingstoke by 9am.

Hopefully the radar will be fixed at some point tomorrow.