Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By flyingearly
#1886097
Tim Dawson wrote:The trouble with that, and any setting I implemented that let you hide all NOTAM relating to obstacles being erected, is that I start imagining the accident report. Something about the software the pilot was using allowing them to suppress notifications of obstacles being erected. It doesn't look good.

I recreated your route around London - though it wasn't clear which airfield was your takeoff and landing point - and managed to get 4 such obstacle NOTAMs in my briefing. That's a lot less than a NATS AIS brief would include because we skip NOTAMs that you'll be flying above. Also by tightening up the horizontal distance parameter on my narrow route brief to 3nm I've just managed to cut that number in half, and the ones remaining are at my planned takeoff airfield.

A much bigger problem is all the notices about overflying far-flung countries that I'm not planning to go anywhere near, and covid stuff. There were 8 long bulletins like that for the same route. Also a page-long NOTAM about the B737. Unfortunately the system lacks any flag that we could rely on to filter out such things.


I'm absolutely not suggesting it's your remit to look at this, but I think about Waze and the wisdom of crowds and wonder if there's a piece of discovery that could be done using AWS Comprehend or similar, to see if NOTAMs could be machine classified in some way based on common phrases.

Then - to bring the Waze example into it - I wonder if you could leverage other SD users' behaviour to see which NOTAMs people read, which ones they always close etc - and rank/score/augment them

The output from this wouldn't be to hide or suppress the NOTAMs, but maybe you could order them in some more meaningful way: most impactful >> least impactful, or colour-code them according to user feedback etc. Certain words and phrases 'searchlight, fireworks, laser, balloon etc' should enable fairly positive classification. Ditto, the word 'Belarus' or 'Iraq'.

I get it's different for different people, but natural language processing is pretty powerful and would be a nice hack project.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886250
Tim Dawson wrote:because we skip NOTAMs that you'll be flying above.


Can you expand on that? Exactly what do you "skip" ?
I would kinda like to know if there is a Notam for a TRA from say 0-3000ft along my route from Bordeaux to Nantes even if Ive planned to fly at 5000+ft, just in case I cant get that high and end up flying at 3000ft...

Tim Dawson wrote:A much bigger problem is all the notices about overflying far-flung countries that I'm not planning to go anywhere near, and covid stuff. There were 8 long bulletins like that for the same route. Also a page-long NOTAM about the B737. Unfortunately the system lacks any flag that we could rely on to filter out such things.


This yes. Its mental. Im not a 737 or flying near Ukraine if I select a DR400 from Bordeaux to Bergerac... And you only need to know border crossing stuff if you are crossing a border!!

Regards, SD..
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By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1886387
I've prototyped some promising stuff in this area, that is successfully detecting a lot of rubbish with no false positives. I'll work on it more next week.

skydriller wrote:Can you expand on that? Exactly what do you "skip" ?
I would kinda like to know if there is a Notam for a TRA from say 0-3000ft along my route from Bordeaux to Nantes even if Ive planned to fly at 5000+ft, just in case I cant get that high and end up flying at 3000ft...


It's up to you. One of the parameters in your narrow route brief is the vertical extent of the "corridor" of your flight as regards NOTAM selection. It defaults to 1000 feet but you can change it such that it includes NOTAM way below you, in your example you'd need to up it to 2100 feet.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886404
Tim Dawson wrote:The trouble with that, and any setting I implemented that let you hide all NOTAM relating to obstacles being erected, is that I start imagining the accident report. Something about the software the pilot was using allowing them to suppress notifications of obstacles being erected. It doesn't look good.

Absolutely fine if the software puts in so much extraneous irrelevant stuff that it becomes easy to miss something actually relevant to the flight, though, because that's on the pilot.

I recreated your route around London - though it wasn't clear which airfield was your takeoff and landing point

It was White Waltham.

we skip NOTAMs that you'll be flying above.

4 of the 7 in my route were at Denham, which was not a stop-off point on the route.

The ones at Ascot, Slough and Hillingdon weren't anywhere near the route.


I use SD all the time, and it drives me mad having to scroll past the Obstacle and Crane ones. It's very rare that there aren't so many that it's an irritation. I genuinely fear that I'll miss something important some day.

You make us explicitly agree on every start of the application that

"The pilot remains responsible for ensuring that they have all information necessary for the safe conduct of any flight...."

Is that not enough?
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By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1886452
Let's be clear: the software isn't putting in any extraneous information. We are showing you NOTAMs within the parameters of your narrow-route briefing, which by default will show you NOTAMs within 5nm laterally and 1000ft vertically of your planned route. It's up to you to change those values, though, to get the best briefing for you.

I've recreated the route in your screenshot, this time starting at White Waltham. I get only one "Obstacle Erected" NOTAM in my briefing, which concerns one at Ascot. I agree it isn't really relevant but let's come back to that.

The important thing is, why are you getting 7 such NOTAM in your briefing? Go to your NOTAM filtering settings and check whether you've changed the parameters to include stuff more than 1000ft below your planned altitude. If you had, that would explain why you're seeing NOTAM about obstacles you're flying well above.

TopCat wrote:You make us explicitly agree on every start of the application that

"The pilot remains responsible for ensuring that they have all information necessary for the safe conduct of any flight...."

Is that not enough?


No.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886464
Tim Dawson wrote:The important thing is, why are you getting 7 such NOTAM in your briefing? Go to your NOTAM filtering settings and check whether you've changed the parameters to include stuff more than 1000ft below your planned altitude. If you had, that would explain why you're seeing NOTAM about obstacles you're flying well above.

This is the filter that I have:

Image

I haven't changed it for quite a while. It's 15nm and 1000' on the tablet.

The default leg height I use is 3000', which would obviously put me well into the TMA as planned. There are no descents shown on the virtual radar, which might bring me down to <1000 above the cranes.

I've got 5 Obstacle Erected ones now on that route, one at Farnborough (still much more than 1000' below, but at least on the route), 3 at Denham, and 1 at Ascot again.

I guess the Ascot one could be during the descent or climb, given that I've got 10nm as the radius and I could be less than that from Ascot during the descent.

Does the filter include instances that are within the radius, AND within the height delta, or OR?
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886470
SteveX wrote:Well there you go, why would anyone care about something 10 miles off their wing tip?

Because more often than not, I don't stick like glue to the magenta line, and I don't want to effectively have not checked the NOTAMs if I happen to go off piste a bit.

I don't care about it if it's 10 miles away. It's if I head in that direction, and it's no longer 10 miles away that it can potentially become relevant. I've always checked NOTAMs for a much wider deviation off route than the default 5nm.
Last edited by TopCat on Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By Rob P
#1886471
TC Takes Two x 5

:lol:

He's a cautious chap.

TopCat wrote:[ I've always checked NOTAMs for a much wider deviation off route than the default 5nm.

Which does explain why you see more junk than some.

Rob P
Last edited by Rob P on Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886472
Rob P wrote:TC Takes Two x 5 :lol:

He's a cautious chap.

:lol:

I like to know about them, but I really don't avoid them by huge margins.

In fact I make a point of flying over GVSs :pirat:
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By Rob P
#1886473
TopCat wrote:In fact I make a point of flying over GVSs :pirat:


I don't make a point of it, but I pay them scant attention.

This is partly driven by the fact the Duxford circuit insists you fly over one.

Image

Rob P
Last edited by Rob P on Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886475
Rob P wrote:
TopCat wrote:[ I've always checked NOTAMs for a much wider deviation off route than the default 5nm.

Which does explain why you see more junk than some.

It doesn't if the junk has to be inside the specified distance off track AND within the 1000' vertical distance for it to appear in the list.
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1886515
SteveX wrote:Don't know about others but my SD just shows NOTAMs on the screen anyway as I fly around.

Does it have a continuous connection to the internet?

If not, it would have to download a lot more than the ones within a narrow route brief to display the ones away from it.

Maybe it does, it would be good if it did.
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By Tim Dawson
SkyDemon developer
#1886533
Your very large horizontal radius is why you’re seeing so much junk.

The obstacle notam is low, obviously, but it’s a cylinder that you end up clipping because your route “corridor” ends up being 20nm wide and 2000ft deep with your settings and you’ve got a descent near enough to the notam that you catch it.