Farnborough Monitoring Code - 5047

[NATS]

The NATS team at Farnborough have requested that we remind the GA community about an option available to transponder equipped aircraft operating beneath and around the peripheries of the Farnborough temporary controlled airspace.

From 14 July to 15 August 2012 (the period of the Olympic CAS(T)), in order to both prevent and mitigate the consequences of airspace infringements, pilots operating in the Farnborough (West) LARS area who are unable or do not wish to receive an ATS, are encouraged to select the Farnborough Frequency Monitoring Code (*5047) plus Mode C, if equipped and to listen out on the Farnborough (West) LARS frequency 125.250 MHz. This will allow Farnborough ATC to attempt to establish contact with an aircraft which is displaying such a code and which is considered to be infringing, or is likely to infringe, controlled airspace in order to resolve the situation quickly and efficiently. Selection of such codes does not imply the provision of any form of Air Traffic Service. Further information regarding Frequency Monitoring Codes is available at UK AIP ENR1-6-2-4 para 2.5.

[John Green]

Is there any one else out there who is, like me, having the greatest difficulty in keeping track of what seems like a huge individual number of pieces of information relating to the Draconian reality of Olympic restricted airspace ?

Phone numbers; radio frequencies; displaced boundaries; vertical separation; squawk codes; hand signals; light flares; flight plans et al. This has become an aviation nightmare and all, apparently without any form of even elementary consultation with those who it directly and adversely affects.

One small and relatively insignificant improvement that could be made is to the boundaries of those busy GA airfields that lie just within the extended exclusion zone - I refer to it as an exclusion zone because that, in effect, is what it is.

For example Headcorn - a busy airfield with much 'coming and going', including parachuting activites. Was it really beyond the wit of those that devised the extension scheme to run the extended boundary around the back (just to the North) of the Headcorn zone so as to permit a more user friendly entry and exit from the South and one that required no flight plan and other bureaucratic measures ?

I haven't got my chart in front of me but, I would guess from memory that perhaps another half dozen airfields in the same situation as that of Headcorn would benefit by a modest boundary alteration. Come on NATS, impress us with your ability to change direction so as to provide a crumb of comfort to a beleaguered GA community that feels itself somewhat 'on the ropes'.


John Green