Use this forum to flag up examples of red tape and gold plate
By ratman
#1432525
jeffg

AIS will lift the lat and long from the E field into the Q line (unless the E field notifies an area such a polygon in which case it will be the centre of a circle which fully encompasses the area). The major difference is that the Q line will show only degrees and minutes where our E field will show Degrees Minutes and Seconds; due to the rounding process for the Q line, the position may vary by around 0.5nm.

Hope that helps

R
By jeffg
#1432543
Thanks for the info. Incidentally I read that as nanometres initially :)
By chevvron
#1671550
James Chan wrote:A very sensible step in the right direction!
Let's hope they will allow unlicensed aerodromes to be published in future too.

RESURRECTING AN OLD THREAD!
A list of unlicensed airfields without ICAO location indicators is in the AIP, but is it in the correct place for everyone's 'needs'?
ENR (a section which GA pilots seldom need to consult) contains lists of 'Aerial Sporting and Recreation Activities' including hang glider sites, gliding sites, microlight sites and parachuting sites, plus unlicensed airfields with ICAO Location Indicators where training has been approved by the CAA. Some of these latter eg Bourne, Henlow, Llanbedr, North Weald, Popham can generate intensive and/or high energy traffic, but rather than list them as airfields in the AD section, they are being treated simply as Navigation Warnings with only a phone number and 'type' of activity listed ie no contact frequency, no indication of runway length or QDM.
I would submit that many of these airfields , especially those listed as 'training' should be listed in the AD section of the AIP under a heading of 'Unlicensed aerodromes' with more detailed information than is presently published in ENR 5.5 extracted from the forms submitted to register the site as an 'Unlicensed & Uncertificated Aeronautical Site' such as runway direction, radio callsign and frequency plus type of radio service etc.
The RAF used to portray these airfields (including a recommended 'avoid' radius in the absence of an ATZ) when they published a section in the AIP (Mil) regarding 'Low Flying Areas' but I cannot find this section in the present AIP (Mil).
#1745215
Looking at the listings in ENR 5.5 again, many flying sites (especially microlight sites which are described as 'Ultralight Flying sites') don't even have a contact phone number listed so you can't phone up and ask if it is OK to overfly; in the same vien, one or two Air Cadet VGS sites have a listed phone number but the VGS has been closed down'.
There really is a 'need' for this list to be better edited and moved to the AD section.
#1957806
I don't know when it happened but I've just noticed the list of unlicensed airfields in ENR 5.5 has changed again.
Instead of there being separate listings for gliding sites, microlight sites, training aerodromes etc, the list is all combined into one in alphabetical order.
Trouble is it's still notified in ENR 5.5 'Aerial Sporting and Recreation Activities' and not in AD 2, plus there's still little information regarding telephone numbers and length of longest useable runway.
#2013095
T67M wrote:If only the AIP carried all of the information which the airfield operators felt necessary then we wouldn't need Pooleys, AFE or a plethora of individual websites.

Why can't they put it in the AD section rather than in ENR; it would make it a lot easier to find the info.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#2013126
[/Max Bygraves] I'm gonna tell you a story.......
A dozen or so years ago a marked increase in (Apache) traffic resulted in many tree-top fly-overs of Knettishall and numerous near misses as we were under the direct path from Wattisham to STANTA (D208).

I was moved to whinge to the Ops manager of RAF Wattisham. He was terribly nice about it but said Knettishall was not on their LFA charts as it was not on Enroute 5.5., which the Apache pilots used for planning

Knettishall has been on the CAA half mil as active for at least 50 years, so I looked in 5.5 and sure enough it wasn't.

So I set about getting Knettishall (which has also been used by the Bury Model Flying club for 40+ years) on ENR 5.5.

I drew a complete blank:(Computer says no) because we were not a microlite site, an aviation training site, a paragliding site, a parachuting site, in fact every other type of recreation imaginable so we could not go in Enr5.5.

Through the back door I got us on the military LFA Charts as an active strip but despite advice from a Forumite I got nowhere with ANR5.5

We did go through a glorious brief period when following a note on the wall in Watt Briefing Room, individual Apache pilots rang us re activity on days when they were going to be close by. But that was short lived

I have moved on now and the strip (still GA active) is now leased by the Bury Model Flying Club.:

It was their saviour as they had been summarily turfed off their only other flying sites (Rougham and Honington following the arrival of RAF gliding school

Aah! I hear you say: its a model flying site and is eligible to be in Enr5.5 on this basis.
Sadly the guy in charge of the modellers could not be ars ed to get it entered in 5.5, nor sadly could he be ar sed to follow through and finalise my application 3 + years in process for a C o A to allow flights to Europe from the strip.

So its still not in ENR 5.5 in its new form, and resident pilots now have to stop off on Customs accredited airfield on their way to Le Touquet and beyond, thereby doubling the time and cost.A totally retrograde step.

A totally sad and frustrating end to the Fersfield Flying Group's stewardship of Knettishall from 1970 to March 2023. [/Max Bygraves]

Taken from the wing of our arrer (RIP) from in front of our hangar a few minutes after landing:
Flyin'Dutch' liked this