Aerobatic NOTAMs

[Matthew]

For those of you who have an aerobatic practice area:

How much notice do you normally give to ATC when you activate it? How long does it take to get into the system?

Just wondering - I ran into a situation over the weekend.

I flew out of town Sat morning and got a standard briefing - nothing about an aerobatics NOTAM for a practice area right nearby.

In the afternoon, I was not doing the flying on the return flight so I didn't get the briefing. We were on flight following, and the approach controller who had the sector we were in vectored us around an aerobatic box.

The flight was about 1.5 hours long - I forgot to ask the afternoon PIC if the NOTAM was mentioned in his briefing. If not, then we probably wouldn't have known about it if we didn't have FF, and would have barrelled right on through the middle of it.

Another reason to have FF, I guess.

Matthew

 

[PittsDriver]

We can open it on a few minutes notice with a call to the TRACON but we usually give at least an hour or so before we're using it. And, you know you're not absolutely required to avoid it but it might be in both yours and some aerobatic pilot's best interest to do so. It's hard to look for an aircraft that may be coming straight up at you from below.

 

[gprellwitz]

I don't know about the lag period (30 minutes springs to mind for some reason), but note that the box isn't always associated with the closest airport. When we headed down to Diana's a couple of years ago for her birthday party, her aerobatic box didn't show up when we had Twin Oaks as the end point. It only came up if Jasper was specified, IIRC. If Diana has internet connection tonight, maybe she'll provide more info.

 

[Matthew]

This particular box is one that I am well aware of. Again - I didn't ask the PIC of the return leg if he had heard anything from the briefer or not. We would have gotten the briefing about 1.5 hours or more prior to actually getting to the box. It was in a direct line to our destination.