Telephone Briefing

AdamZ

AdamZ

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Display name:
Adam Zucker
Call me old fashioned, my daughter does, I still like the phone briefings from FSS, the briefings online just have so much crap to wade through. Anyway Haven't had need to get one in a while but called for one on friday and one today.

I'm happy to report both days I had zero wait time. The briefers were friendly very helpful and professional. Just thought I'd report thats all
 
I agree with you. Some online briefings have so much to wade through. I call all the time. I've never had to wait though. Maybe i've been lucky.
 
The zero wait is that you are probably one of the last pilots to still call in. I gave up on FSS a while ago. They and flight watch barely even seem to answer the radio anymore and that I find highly annoying!!!
 
I think they ignore Scott. I haven't had any problems reaching any of the above yet, ever. ;)
 
Use them all the time, zero wait time, always nice.
I like to call them to make sure I didn't miss anything on the net.
2 minutes and I'm ready to go.
 
AdamZ said:
Call me old fashioned, my daughter does, I still like the phone briefings from FSS, the briefings online just have so much crap to wade through. Anyway Haven't had need to get one in a while but called for one on friday and one today.

I'm happy to report both days I had zero wait time. The briefers were friendly very helpful and professional. Just thought I'd report thats all
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Cool stuff, glad to hear you had a good experience. I have had mixed experiences when it comes to telephone briefings from FSS recently. IME, it really depends on the briefer and also when you call. If I have to wait more than 5 minutes on hold for a briefer (frequent occurrence this past summer), I hang up. Call me impatient but I can get all of the same information from Fltplan.com and ADDS. That said I have also had some excellent briefers who went above and beyond the scope of a standard briefing to get a better picture of what the weather was doing. I really appreciated that and recognized their efforts while on the phone with them.

The local expertise I came to appreciate through a telephone briefing is very seldom now as I seem to get routed to a briefer who handles a region over 1000 miles from my departure airport despite following the initial automated prompt. Having a briefer who is familiar with the cape is particularly helpful when going to Nantucket when it's forecast close to minimums. When the briefer is familiar with central Missouri it becomes a lot less helpful. The local area knowledge is certainly missed.

ScottM said:
The zero wait is that you are probably one of the last pilots to still call in. I gave up on FSS a while ago. They and flight watch barely even seem to answer the radio anymore and that I find highly annoying!!!
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Wait, they answered the radio when you called? :rolleyes:
 
I think I'm one of their most frequent users. I've been known to call them five times in a day and I plan on keeping on with that. Some of the briefers are better than others, but in general I'm happy with them.

Ryan
 
I've noticed that telephone briefings are less time consuming that online briefings.
 
Twice recently I've ended up with a briefer that had no clue AT ALL how to file a DC SFRA flight plan, resulting in a transfer. On top of that, one of the plans got lost, leaving me up in the air (literally). Fortunately, ATC dealt with it very well.
 
We call for a briefing before each and every flight. Have since 9/11.

We NEVER have a wait, and the briefers are SO much better than the gummint drones we used to wrestle with. The Lock/Mart folks are courteous, intelligent, eager to help, and extremely knowledgeable. Best of all, they are almost all real pilots.

Count me as extremely happy with privatized FSS.
 
Jay Honeck said:
We call for a briefing before each and every flight. Have since 9/11.

We NEVER have a wait, and the briefers are SO much better than the gummint drones we used to wrestle with. The Lock/Mart folks are courteous, intelligent, eager to help, and extremely knowledgeable. Best of all, they are almost all real pilots.

Count me as extremely happy with privatized FSS.
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Their service has certainly improved a lot. They sure had a heck of a learning curve when they first took over.
 
Palmpilot said:
Their service has certainly improved a lot. They sure had a heck of a learning curve when they first took over.
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I remember the lifeless, monotone briefings we used to get from the gummint hacks. Sure, those guys may have had some local knowledge the Lockmart guys don't have, but getting them to share it with you was like pulling teeth. Most weren't pilots, and many had the interpersonal skills of a sticky doorknob.

Now, these briefers are positively perky. They are obviously very "into" their jobs, truly understand what flying little planes is like, and have a genuine desire to help us. And they are polite! The whole experience is just so much nicer.
 
My Students and I call nearly every flight. We sometime use online services but generally find a cell phone call just before engine start is quicker and easier.

Almost never wait.

One student this week called from the Boise area and asked for a briefing for a flight from Ola (small town of less than 100 people) to Boise. The briefer (who I think was located in Arizona) told him there was no airport in Ola. My student learned the briefer had grown up in Ola. My students father had since build a private airstrip there.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
It's a tool in the box that is nice to have, but that I rarely use. I do all my filings on Fltplan.com. Gets me all the info I need, ends up being done a lot quicker.

That said, whenever I've used them, I've been happy with the service over the past few years. Four years ago when I'd call them, they'd have a tendency to try to talk me out of flying.
 
I really miss the days when FSS was still a useful service rather than a contract to the lowest bidder.

Back then, briefers were local. They could give you information you couldn't much more easily get online. There was accountability - if there was a problem, you could tell them and they'd take it very seriously. They'd pull the tapes with the briefer and review. It was similar to ATC, which isn't surprising because they were run under the same roof. Now.... just sad. Nothing at all that I couldn't get from ADDS in a much better format.
 
Yeah, I tend to both check online and call on account of being new to this... never had a problem with the telephone folks, although sometimes I have to beg them to slow down a bit :)
 
I've used them a few times in the past month or so. Mostly a belt and suspenders thing, where I already self-briefed with aviationweather.gov and ForeFlight. I've not had any wait, and they've all been friendly. Sometimes too verbose, where it took 10 minutes for them to go through all the things on the list, and I had almost reached the airport.

DEFINITELY much better than they were when Lockmart first started!
 
The one skill they completely lost was taking down in-flight check-ins in backcountry terrain.

Around here CPA still teaches pilots to report pass crossings and what-not in the mountains to FSS via RCOs that are right there on top of the appropriate peaks for that exact reason...

But the modern AFSS folks think you want weather or other information and are quite confused when you say you just want someone to note your current location on your filed flight plan.

Denver FSS prior to LockMart AFSS understood and SAR folks knew to call them prior to launching a search since they'd have the info on last known location of a VFR flight. Nowadays I'm not sure they'd have any idea.

As far as weather and other services go, phone briefings are about the same content-wise with LockMart being a tad friendlier.

In-person briefings at the FSS were the best back when only they had all the maps and weather charts. The old system did a great job on that.

New system? Not possible.

Another thing lost... DF steers. I don't think AFSS can do that from all the locations FSS could. Never had to avail myself of that particular service, but it was nice to know someone could do it.

With today's tech, DF steers could be automated and remotes could do it. Wouldn't even have to be AFSS. Could just be a built in feature/data point on regular controller's screens. Could also be done continuously for all transmissions.

But there's no budget for it.

FCC has such toys constantly operating looking at interference sources. Too bad the two agencies can't "share" that platform.
 
Adam: You are old fashioned ! (you asked for it)

I do the phone briefing thing because I dont care about the 'light sock illumination dim at Dillwither, Kanbraska' 100 miles the opposite of my flight path but I DO care about the TFR that is 1 mile off the end of my trip. The online systems do a poor job at highlighting the important stuff vs. the sea of unimportant stuff that rattles down the screen for a flight of any length.

Never haver a wait. Allways have a friendly briefer in Ft Worth, regardless of what state code I put in ;) .
 
I do call.
I call to cover myself - as I favor WeatherMeister.com for briefings (yeah, I know it doesn't "count.")
And, I find that I miss the local knowledge of Great Lakes weather patterns for those times when things are iffy (for this VFR pilot).
"VFR not recommended"... yeah, how about 10 minutes from now?
But, I've never had a wait or a discourteous briefing - even as I've bumbled my info or asked for something outside of the standard.
 
I use fltplan.com too. Before that DUATS. Haven't talked to a briefer in a long time. The only time I do if I do not have access to on line services, or if I need an update on TFR's.
 
If I somehow manage to get caught in a TFR issue, I want to be on record I made the call to FSS asking for them.
 
I also haven't called on the phone in a long time. The last time I can remember regularly calling was when I would go to small airports in eastern CO or western NE and KS which did not have internet. The briefings would seem incredibly long with them giving me every AIRMET in the mountains. I know that they need to give all the AIMETS in their region but it wasn't like I was going to overfly Denver, which was always the destination, and end up in the mountains somehow. :confused:
 
I like scanning through navmonster.com's output while getting a voice/phone briefing. ForeFlight's briefing format is also good, and at least that one "counts" since someone's tracking that you pulled it up...
 
I call, as I don't have internet at the hangar, and I do want my tail number in the system for legalities. However, I find the briefings significantly less than useful. They usually tell me the stuff I just read from the NOAA. Used to be they could tell me lots of local wisdom, such as what the wx patterns were expected for that time of year. Now its just some guy in Arizona reading a screen. Fortunately, after all these years I have just a bit of weather wisdom of my own. I feel badly for new pilots though.
 
AdamZ said:
Call me old fashioned, my daughter does, I still like the phone briefings from FSS, the briefings online just have so much crap to wade through
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That crap is all the potential stuff that the LockMart pukes will forget to give you when it is relevant. At least if I miss the NOTAM in the DUAT briefing it's my own darn fault.
 
AdamZ said:
Call me old fashioned, my daughter does, I still like the phone briefings from FSS, the briefings online just have so much crap to wade through. Anyway Haven't had need to get one in a while but called for one on friday and one today.

I'm happy to report both days I had zero wait time. The briefers were friendly very helpful and professional. Just thought I'd report thats all
Click to expand...

Funny thing is I need to learn to get weather elsewhere. All I ever use is briefers. We discuss TFR's / baseball game TFR's / questions I have about flight plans etc.

They are the greatest.

I heart my briefers.
 
steingar said:
I call, as I don't have internet at the hangar, and I do want my tail number in the system for legalities. However, I find the briefings significantly less than useful. They usually tell me the stuff I just read from the NOAA. Used to be they could tell me lots of local wisdom, such as what the wx patterns were expected for that time of year. Now its just some guy in Arizona reading a screen. Fortunately, after all these years I have just a bit of weather wisdom of my own. I feel badly for new pilots though.
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They still talk to me like they know the area. For example, what TAFs to check for when the marine layer will clear - or that the airmet for IFR is way off shore - etc.
 
Telephone briefing??

That's like, Morse code or something????

The days of me dialing a phone to have someone describe to me what I can see for myself are over. Plus, it's a lot easier for me to interpret when i look at it for myself.
 
Sac Arrow said:
If I somehow manage to get caught in a TFR issue, I want to be on record I made the call to FSS asking for them.
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This is one of the main reasons I call. I am responsible for my flight and I want it on record that I did prepare properly for my flight.
 
I actually called FSS the other day to pick up my IFR clearance in Cable (3CU). First time in a couple years IIRC. I even used the land line in the FBO building thanks to AT&Ts awesome coverage up there. There was no wait, and the guy was pretty good. The only odd thing was that I didn't get a clearance or void time. Didn't even give me a time to advise them If I wasn't off the ground.
 
Long ago I could call San Angelo flight service and talk to Charlie. He was so wonderful because he knew the area and that I was a student and he made a point of really explaining the situation. But he's gone... Now mostly I use duats and ADDS (that's where I get the TFR info etc) and if I have a specific question on my way to the airport, like is that line of Tstorms still moving from #*%. To. ~<£ then I call and just ask for that needed info.. I don't have on board weather other than my eyes....

I have called flight watch and gotten help semi recently.

My students will be looking up Wx and calling, with me standing there with them for a few times.
 
flyersfan31 said:
Telephone briefing??

That's like, Morse code or something????

The days of me dialing a phone to have someone describe to me what I can see for myself are over. Plus, it's a lot easier for me to interpret when i look at it for myself.
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Try going to First Flight (KFFA) and finding that the computers in the briefing room don't work, and your smartphone won't connect. Pretty much leaves you one way to file and get a briefing.

That was the case last time I was at Kitty Hawk.

ANd no choice BUT to file as I was headed back into the SFRA.
 
I've been turned onto using Fltplan.com and DUATs but I usually call WX-BRIEF just to get my tail # in the system to ask for TFRs & NOTAMs. Most of the time I find the briefer just goes on and on about some obscure tower with a beacon light out or something like that and I usually just cut them short after I find out there are no popup TFR's or anything like that.

I'm usually already looking at weather and winds aloft before I even drive out to the airport anyway.
 
MSPAviator said:
I've been turned onto using Fltplan.com and DUATs but I usually call WX-BRIEF just to get my tail # in the system to ask for TFRs & NOTAMs. Most of the time I find the briefer just goes on and on about some obscure tower with a beacon light out or something like that and I usually just cut them short after I find out there are no popup TFR's or anything like that.

I'm usually already looking at weather and winds aloft before I even drive out to the airport anyway.
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Are you requesting a standard briefing? If all you want is TFRs, ask for an abbreviated briefing and request just TFRs.
 
I can get better weather info through foreflight.

I call somewhat frequently to check for TFR's and NOTAM's along a route. Usually I do the abbreviated briefing.
 
i have gotten lazy in my old age and just glance at fltplan.com so i can say i got something official. i usually already know what to expect based on aviationweather.gov and the MOS forecasts. i usually check tfr.faa.gov to see if there is anything going on
 
The problem with an abbreviated briefing is if something does happen, the FAA is going to ask, did you know everything about the flight? If you're on record asking for an abbreviated briefing, then you didn't. You can claim that you looked it all up on your home computer, but without DUATS, its just a claim with no substantiation.

I usually let the guy go on while I do my preflight, unless he comes up with something of which I am not already aware. This has bitten me on the six. I did try and use a taxiway once that was NOTAM'd closed. I have no doubt the briefer told me about the NOTAM. Had to push the airplane out of a drift on that trip.
 
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