Goodbye HIWAS

flyingron

flyingron

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FlyingRon
Gone officially on January 8. It should be interesting to see if ATC gets used to not announcing the availability of SIGMETS on HIWAS any faster than they did when FlightWatch was abandoned.
 
Not needed anymore. Nice to see progress in getting rid of outdated systems. Wonder if the testing material will be updated to remove the hiwas questions.
 
I remember watching my Dad cutting a a HIWAS in the recording room. The next room over was the DF room. Technology moves on.
 
Glad I don’t have to mentally plot the boundaries of a sigmet as I pay attention to the recording. Looking at it on an EFB is so much better.
 
Just on the weekend, center announced a HIWAS thingy and I said to my copilot; 'jeez I don't think I would even know how to get that information.'
Yay, something I won't have to worry that I didn't know.
 
I liked them ... better than listening to stupid morse code to ID a navaid. The Deming VOR in my area would indicate its name and then provide the local weather ... better than trying to figure out if the morse matches ...
 
danhagan said:
I liked them ... better than listening to stupid morse code to ID a navaid. The Deming VOR in my area would indicate its name and then provide the local weather ... better than trying to figure out if the morse matches ...
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The problem with your area is the ADSB ground stations don’t have complete coverage, my Aera would tell me when it’s missing radar data, I just flew through your area and found areas of “no data”.


Tom
 
MooneyDriver78 said:
The problem with your area is the ADSB ground stations don’t have complete coverage, my Aera would tell me when it’s missing radar data, I just flew through your area and found areas of “no data”.
Tom
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HiWAS might be a GOOD thing to keep around a little longer;)

Next time fly the straight in to RWY 28 at Dona Ana (KDNA) and do a barrel roll between 4 and 5 miles out and you'll be over my house:rolleyes:;)

A note to those of you flying through this area: if KTCS (Truth or Consequences) isn't too far out of your way, fuel is $1 cheaper per gallon or better at $4.01 for the entire region.
 
I'm not sure what the big expense at maintaining HIWAS is. Isn't it just a recording played through the VOR audio?
 
danhagan said:
HiWAS might be a GOOD thing to keep around a little longer;)

Next time fly the straight in to RWY 28 at Dona Ana (KDNA) and do a barrel roll between 4 and 5 miles out and you'll be over my house:rolleyes:;)

A note to those of you flying through this area: if KTCS (Truth or Consequences) isn't too far out of your way, fuel is $1 cheaper per gallon or better at $4.01 for the entire region.
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Thanks for the recommendation, but the problem with KTCS is you have mountain range on west side, restricted areas on the right, so it effectively becomes a 130nm round trip detour if travel west & east I think you were eluding to. Also it doesn’t appear to have a mechanic on site and it’s 7 miles from civilization. When I am on a cross country going through your that area my stop is KDMN, has major engine/aircraft service according to airnav.com and hotels are less than a mile away. I’ll pay more for fuel to get convenience.


Tom
 
Mtns2Skies said:
FWIW I use(d) HIWAS regularly. I also liked flightwatch. Not all of us like a lot of gadgets in the plane so having that information accessible outside of the plane was pretty nifty.
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You LIKED trying to determine where a SIGMET or area of thunderstorms or something was by listening to a list of radials and dme from VORs you never heard of, let alone know where they are, and then plotting that information while in flight?

Rather than get the same information with a quick glance at a screen?

The technology makes things SO much easier. Embrace it!
 
flyingron said:
I'm not sure what the big expense at maintaining HIWAS is. Isn't it just a recording played through the VOR audio?
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All the VORs are 50+ years old. Some stations have voice, some don’t. The equipment needs up dated and updating the ones with voice will be more expensive. How does the HIWAS recording get to the VOR? I suspect over old phone lines that need repaired too.

90% of private pilots could not tell you what HIWAS is or what the H in the frequency window on the chart even means.
 
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The ATIS quote used to be "Hazardous weather information available on HIWAS, Flight Watch or Flight Service frequencies."

Then it became "Hazardous weather information available on HIWAS or Flight Service frequencies."

Now it's just going to be "Hazardous weather information available on Flight Service Frequencies".

Pretty soon it's just going to be "Hazardous weather information available."
 
Clip4 said:
All the VORs are 50+ years old. How does the HIWAS recording get to the VOR? I suspect over old phone lines that totally shot.
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If copper in the ground magically degraded, you wouldn’t be taking to Center.
 
Clip4 said:
All the VORs are 50+ years old. Some stations have voice, some don’t. The equipment needs up dated and updating the ones with voice will be more expensive. How does the HIWAS recording get to the VOR? I suspect over old phone lines that need repaired too.

90% of private pilots could not tell you what HIWAS is or what the H in the frequency window on the chart even means.
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They're not pulling the the FSS remote outlets yet. Not sure why HIWAS is a whole lot different. If the VOR is discontinued, then there's no problem with no HIWAS there, but if it's still operational, I'm not seeing the savings.
 
denverpilot said:
If copper in the ground magically degraded, you wouldn’t be taking to Center.
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Except that copper some times is above ground at some point and the phone companies keep asking the public utility commissions for permission to quit maintaining it. Especially in rural areas

Also once copper gets wet it doesn’t work. Fiber optics cures that.
 
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Clip4 said:
Except that copper some times is above ground at some point and the phone companies keep asking the public utility commissions for permission to quit maintaining it. Especially in rural areas
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Never been a problem at any FAA or other transmitter site I’ve worked at.

The transmitter site for ZDV that covers the practice area you fly in, (I think from your posting about hiring a while back...) is on a pile of rocks with 100 MPH winds, and when it’s down, the SnoCat rolls. 24/7 all weather.

VOR sites are the same. Someone is rolling as soon as they’re down.

Circuits are easy. If the gear to operate a circuit is no longer available, one phone call telling them they had to pay for all new gear and an approval was all that was needed. Cable crew, whatever. On the telecom side.

I assume the power side is as easy. And Feds actually bought new generators from time to time. Never saw a thirty year old one on any Fed site.

Not even the dumbest rural power company turns down Fed money. Those right of ways they want to abandon are residential. Bottom of the totem pole.

Good friend of mine got a JetRanger ride to a different ZDV site that was snowed in to replace a fuse and start the generator. He wasn’t even the power company employee, but he knew the site and knew what was probably dead. It’s a multi-use site but the Feds hired the heli. (You’d think they’d ask the Guard... but no...)

That stuff is also monitored from here to Sunday. Even losing the monitoring circuit is cause for a NOTAM. Everybody hates paperwork.

(This goes for tower lighting at non-Fed sites too, but the big tower companies are really squeezing labor costs right now and the site managers usually cover five to six states. It’s maintaining their “shareholder value”. Ha.)

I always liked being co-located with FAA or any other Feds. It meant I never had to go to the site myself for anything. We all have each other’s phone numbers and the Fed and State guys have Snocats and helicopters and whatever they need. And they want out of the office. Always.

There’s probably six bosses all the way to DC calling if their stuff is down. Any other time it’s mind numbing meetings.

“Next time you’re up there can you see if my second power supply is in alarm?”

“Hell I need an excuse to get out of the office.”

We never had major utility issues on a Fed site. If it needed fixed the bills were paid.
 
Wet copper works just fine by the way. Power or the sort of circuits feeding an FAA site.

That stuff isn’t engineered with a ****ty little loop start POTS line like your house.

Nor is there only one circuit. Ever. Often three and one of those was microwave.

Just the outside entrance panel for lightning protection alone is worth more than my airport car.
 
RussR said:
You LIKED trying to determine where a SIGMET or area of thunderstorms or something was by listening to a list of radials and dme from VORs you never heard of, let alone know where they are, and then plotting that information while in flight?

Rather than get the same information with a quick glance at a screen?

The technology makes things SO much easier. Embrace it!
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I periodically would tune in HIWAS when ATC would mention there was something on it. I'd listen to that long list of locations bounding the SIGMET and tried to follow it, quickly realized I couldn't, and just reverted to the ipad and looking out the window. Only way I could see that being useful is if I transcribed it, which would take several passes to get down I'm sure then tried drawing that on the chart. All while keeping on top of flying the airplane. Yeah, no thanks
 
Flight Service itself is barely needed anymore. I can see this reduced to one floor in a building somewhere in a few years. Even with old avionics, an iPad and ADS-B receiver is within reach of most any pilot. On the rare cases I talk to them on the radio they seem bored and provide far more information than I asked for. I’m not old enough but before the internet I understand there could be a 30 minute wait or more to talk to a specialist on the radio. Times change!

Nate where are the ZDV transmitters located out of curiosity? Would be nice to have a map, sometimes they handoff too soon to the next controller and they can’t pick me up coming in from west.
 

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MooneyDriver78 said:
Thanks for the recommendation, but the problem with KTCS is you have mountain range on west side, restricted areas on the right, so it effectively becomes a 130nm round trip detour if travel west & east I think you were eluding to. Also it doesn’t appear to have a mechanic on site and it’s 7 miles from civilization. When I am on a cross country going through your that area my stop is KDMN, has major engine/aircraft service according to airnav.com and hotels are less than a mile away. I’ll pay more for fuel to get convenience. Tom
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It'd be nice if White Sands made an E-W corridor ...

It's a 62 mile detour from I-10 near Las Cruces to T or C ... if you need a lot of fuel, usually worth while. For Jet A it's even cheaper ($3.21). Deming is nice, we go there for breakfast .... the courtesy van is a real beater:rolleyes:
 
danhagan said:
Deming is nice, we go there for breakfast .... the courtesy van is a real beater:rolleyes:
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Yea, that was special.

But at another airport,they told me to take the green truck. So I did, it was packed with junk, windows didn’t work, etc. It was worst. As it turned out, I took the wrong green truck (they just leave the keys in the vehicles, small towns?) I ended up almost being arrested for stealing it, fortunately it all got straightened out before they found me.

I’ll try to avoid the courtesy cars in the future.


Tom
 
John Myers said:
Nate where are the ZDV transmitters located out of curiosity? Would be nice to have a map, sometimes they handoff too soon to the next controller and they can’t pick me up coming in from west.
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They pulled down the maps for “security” against “terrorism”. I know of two sites for the front range plus whatever they’re doing over there on the towers at the old Flight Service station near APA and hunted down a couple of the ADS-B sites since they broadcast their location... but not sure I should say about the two-way sites.

Also I think they know about that problem. If you transmit that you’re not hearing them they’ll flip transmitters.
 
denverpilot said:
They pulled down the maps for “security” against “terrorism”. I know of two sites for the front range plus whatever they’re doing over there on the towers at the old Flight Service station near APA and hunted down a couple of the ADS-B sites since they broadcast their location... but not sure I should say about the two-way sites.

Also I think they know about that problem. If you transmit that you’re not hearing them they’ll flip transmitters.
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I see cars in that old FSS station and always wonder what they’re up too. Would be neat to get an in person briefing on the way out of town. They do publish the ADS-B tower locations. Seems impossible to hide the transmitter tower locations given the service roads, maintenance contracts that I’m sure are required to be public, plain visibility of them, etc. Maybe another case of security theater, or security by inconvenience.

More than once I’ve had to flip back to the previous controller. It seems not all of them are certain where the boundaries of their transmitters are, I’m sure it varies based on terrain over the front range.
 
Two things I'll miss from HIWAS - not needing to use the Morse code and CWAs, if there was one.
 
John Myers said:
More than once I’ve had to flip back to the previous controller. It seems not all of them are certain where the boundaries of their transmitters are, I’m sure it varies based on terrain over the front range.
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Yeah transmit blind that you can’t hear the one you got handed to and they’ll often pop up.

You coming in from the northwest or southwest? The southwest stuff sits kinda low on the front range side and can be shadowed if you’re low over the main part of the mountains. The northwest site that I know of is higher up toward but not over the continental divide.
 
denverpilot said:
Never been a problem at any FAA or other transmitter site I’ve worked at.
.........
We never had major utility issues on a Fed site. If it needed fixed the bills were paid.
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Talk to some of the broadcasters that are losing copper and POTS at their transmitter sites, including shared sites (with Federal services).

FAA has microwave at some, others are going to be harder. Fed specs are to move away from CU and other equipment. The old ATT/Verizon site at 21st and L in DC facility is about 1/4-1/3 of the size it used to be, and much of the old space has been turned into offices or startup co-working space. There's still a door marked "Entry Restricted", but has a glass window in it (with equipment behind). FTS2000 and it's successor started the move away from copper/POTS.
 
wsuffa said:
Talk to some of the broadcasters that are losing copper and POTS at their transmitter sites, including shared sites (with Federal services).

FAA has microwave at some, others are going to be harder. Fed specs are to move away from CU and other equipment. The old ATT/Verizon site at 21st and L in DC facility is about 1/4-1/3 of the size it used to be, and much of the old space has been turned into offices or startup co-working space. There's still a door marked "Entry Restricted", but has a glass window in it (with equipment behind). FTS2000 and it's successor started the move away from copper/POTS.
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This sounds interesting. Couple questions.
Define: POTS, “CU and other equipment”, FTS2000
 
wsuffa said:
Talk to some of the broadcasters that are losing copper and POTS at their transmitter sites, including shared sites (with Federal services).

FAA has microwave at some, others are going to be harder. Fed specs are to move away from CU and other equipment. The old ATT/Verizon site at 21st and L in DC facility is about 1/4-1/3 of the size it used to be, and much of the old space has been turned into offices or startup co-working space. There's still a door marked "Entry Restricted", but has a glass window in it (with equipment behind). FTS2000 and it's successor started the move away from copper/POTS.
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Oh no doubt Cooper is being replaced with fiber. It was the “they don’t want the right of way” part that made me laugh. Those going to radio sites are worth a fortune to them.

To lay fiber and keep milking. LOL.

If the fiber has to go on a pole, because the site is all rocks, so be it. :) They don’t care. Commercial customers pay enough to cover converting since commercial usually isn’t oversubscribed and has SLAs... :)
 
Tarheelpilot said:
This sounds interesting. Couple questions.
Define: POTS, “CU and other equipment”, FTS2000
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POTS - plain old telephone service, what we had for about 100 years before data became king. CU - copper, as in copper wire as opposed to coax or fiber or 5G. FTS2000 - a master contract for federal telecommunications services, now being modernized under other contract vehicles. FTS stood for Federal Telecommunications Service, which was essentially a private switched service set aside/reserved for the Feds. There was also AutoVON, which was the military voice telephone network. Both FTS and AutoVON had private facilities and switches but often traveled the last mile over the local phone systems. Think of them as giant PBX systems, though AutoVON had more secure services.

denverpilot said:
Oh no doubt Cooper is being replaced with fiber. It was the “they don’t want the right of way” part that made me laugh. Those going to radio sites are worth a fortune to them.

To lay fiber and keep milking. LOL.

If the fiber has to go on a pole, because the site is all rocks, so be it. :) They don’t care. Commercial customers pay enough to cover converting since commercial usually isn’t oversubscribed and has SLAs... :)
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It's all about 5G last mile these days. The big telcos have cut down their fiber deployment intending to use 5G millimeter-wave. Let's review: the original system and long lines were copper, then microwave and satellite were deployed for long lines (radio spectrum) then it over back to fiber (no radio), and now it's moving back to radio with 5G. And that's today's though on How the Copper Turns.
 
wsuffa said:
POTS - plain old telephone service, what we had for about 100 years before data became king. CU - copper, as in copper wire as opposed to coax or fiber or 5G. FTS2000 - a master contract for federal telecommunications services, now being modernized under other contract vehicles. FTS stood for Federal Telecommunications Service, which was essentially a private switched service set aside/reserved for the Feds. There was also AutoVON, which was the military voice telephone network. Both FTS and AutoVON had private facilities and switches but often traveled the last mile over the local phone systems. Think of them as giant PBX systems, though AutoVON had more secure services.



It's all about 5G last mile these days. The big telcos have cut down their fiber deployment intending to use 5G millimeter-wave. Let's review: the original system and long lines were copper, then microwave and satellite were deployed for long lines (radio spectrum) then it over back to fiber (no radio), and now it's moving back to radio with 5G. And that's today's though on How the Copper Turns.
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Thank you.
 
By the way, if someone wants to waste a few hours reading about the old ATT Long Lines history, this website has a lot of info. It includes some photos taken at/of some of the facilities (including Cold War stuff.

Www.long-lines.net
 
wsuffa said:
It's all about 5G last mile these days. The big telcos have cut down their fiber deployment intending to use 5G millimeter-wave. Let's review: the original system and long lines were copper, then microwave and satellite were deployed for long lines (radio spectrum) then it over back to fiber (no radio), and now it's moving back to radio with 5G. And that's today's though on How the Copper Turns.
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Except that only one carrier’s “5G” deployment is planned for millimeter wave. The rest are just hanging around at radar frequencies and making marketing wank up about it being “5G” when it’s just faster LTE at shorter distances. :)

Not a one of them has the backhaul fiber needed to service any more than a handful of locations with true 5G speeds either.

Just wank to keep everyone thinking wireless tech has surpassed fiber so you’ll pay twice as much per month for it, and more in some cases than commercial clients pay for guaranteed bandwidth. LOL.

I love telecom. People will pay anything to see cat memes. :) They’ll even pay twice and cover the WiFi at home so the wireless network holes are less noticeable. :)
 
wsuffa said:
By the way, if someone wants to waste a few hours reading about the old ATT Long Lines history, this website has a lot of info. It includes some photos taken at/of some of the facilities (including Cold War stuff.

Www.long-lines.net
Click to expand...

I have the engineering drawings for the standard Cold War era AT&T outhouse. Friends dropped a 12’ “cornucopia” microwave horn off a crane once into one. It bounced off with a small bend in the roof. LOL. Most overbuilt outhouses you’ll ever see.
 
wsuffa said:
Nate, you'll enjoy this BSP....

http://long-lines.net/documents/BSP-770-130-301/BSP-770-130-301-p1.html
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LOL! By the time I was working with them, they’d renamed BSPs to MOPs (irony in this case?). Method of Procedure.

The crazy thing was, they were right. I hated writing the %^*#*}! things but you know what? When IT/Telecom people have to WRITE DOWN what they’re going to do before doing it, coding it, whatever... the end result is a LOT more stable and sensible after that document has been reviewed and things are done exactly according to the document.

My old boss and mentor who stuck me on the AT&T account knew I’d like it.

I also would handle Verizon, mainly video stuff but occasionally audio, when the Verizon assigned tech was out. It always felt like mayhem and madness compared to AT&T.

Both somehow managed to get things done.

NTT in Japan was the craziest. They’d just call and say “Log in and fix” and let us do whatever the hell we wanted. Fastest way back online was to destroy and re-create the billing database? No problem! You do now, Nate-san! LOL.

Good old MOPs...
 
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