NOTAMs via email or push notifications?

dans2992

dans2992

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Dans2992
So, recently I flew in to an uncontrolled field that had fast-changing NOTAMs due to both a gear-up landing and runway construction. With no ATIS to communicate this stuff, a lot can change between your initial NOTAM check and arrival or departure.

Does anyone know of a method to monitor NOTAMs at specific airports for specific timeframes and receive an email or other proactive notification when a NOTAM is issued for a given airport?
 
What you're asking would be a great advisory heads up service. It can tell you there is something going on before you get around to looking it up through official channels. It would be nice to find out a notam popped up closing your destination airport while you're driving the airport or packing up to leave the house.

However...

No push notification of any kind can or will ever replace checking with FSS for the live, current, official word. Period, End of story. No push notification can be guaranteed to go through. It can be delayed on the server end. It can be delayed by your ISP or cell phone carrier. You might have no service. Your phone might be dead. And all of that is unreliable in flight due to poor cell/date reception. Etc etc etc. Ever had someone say "Hey didn't you see that email/text I sent you??"

So no matter what, if you want the official and most accurate word, you're picking up the phone or radio and having a chat with FSS. This is also the only thing that the FAA and NTSB consider a briefing. If you brief yourself using things like www.AviationWeather.gov, tfr.faa.gov, or the briefing and sat data section of various apps, that is great but it doesn't count as an official briefing. If you crash or bust a TFR, they do not care how much of your own briefing you did if you didn't call FSS. Calling FSS is logged and recorded. And it just might save your ass if you bust a TFR that they didn't tell you about.

Regarding things changing prior to your arrival at an uncontrolled field, that's why you have eyes.
 
The FAA NOTAM system is archaic and busted. Something "rapidly changing" just isn't going to happen. Absent an ATIS or AWOS, you're just going to have to rely on someone clueing you in on the CTAF or seeing the disabled aircraft on the runway or the big X.
 
flyingron said:
The FAA NOTAM system is archaic and busted. Something "rapidly changing" just isn't going to happen. Absent an ATIS or AWOS, you're just going to have to rely on someone clueing you in on the CTAF or seeing the disabled aircraft on the runway or the big X.
Click to expand...

Oh come now. This is like one step above morse code signalling. Top of the line. Nothing but the best.
 
Could you imagine, you'd get 400 notams on your phone and never see what you needed.
 
I forget which app it is is, but one of them breaks the Notams up by topic. Handy but again, too but it doesn't count as an official check of notams.

It's a lovely sunny day. Severe clear. Ten and a million. I want to fly 55nm for an XC solo in western Maryland. I have to read about 200 burned out radio tower light bulbs at 201ft. I have to ready about 20 different IAP changes. I have to sift through the 4 pages of SFRA permanent notams. I have to read about off-shore naval activity that might interupt transatlantic GPS. And somewhere in all that, is a notice about a taxiway closure at my destination.

Yes, it's stupid.
 
Ok, #1, I'm not looking for a CYA type of thing. I don't care if it's "official" as long as it works.

#2, I'm talking about NOTAMS that change after you've gotten a briefing but before you taxi to the active runway.

Not looking for _all_ NOTAMs, just newly issued or changed ones.
 
Same bizzare and old methods of NOTEM's exist while using FF while VFR....

You can be cruising along getting flight following and a last minute TFR pops up for let's say a gas release at a well head.... Happens all the time here in Wyoming.... Center will probably know and steer IFR traffic around it... VFR traffic while fly right through the TFR and ATC will not gave a warning....:mad2::mad2:....
 
Yup. However, that is not something that can be held against you. If you checked NOTAMs prior to departure with FSS, there were none, and one pops up in your face, they can't hold you accountable for it.

That said, the resources that ADS-B makes available are handy for that. If a TFR pops up, a restricted area goes hot, or say the P40 expands, it gives me a chance to know about it in flight when I otherwise wouldn't. While I don't need to, and I couldn't be held accountable for it, it makes me a little less likely to be shot down.
 
By the way, to bypass the 50 pages of official, but irrelevant, NOTAMs, just go here:

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/

Put in your departure and destination airports, and that's all you get. You can also look it up for airports along your route. Official? No. Works? Yes.
 
flyingron said:
The FAA NOTAM system is archaic and busted. Something "rapidly changing" just isn't going to happen. Absent an ATIS or AWOS, you're just going to have to rely on someone clueing you in on the CTAF or seeing the disabled aircraft on the runway or the big X.
Click to expand...

You're right. Think about it - we can open up Facebook and in 5 seconds, see updates from what our friends are doing. But we can't get a "newsfeed" style interface to notams. This would be a great app. "Mark as read", done.
 
Wiring up the NOTAM system to a RSS or some other feed isn't the problem. The problem is that they aren't publishing the in real time.
 
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