Airfield Frquency Areas

Subject: Airfield Frquency Areas 2009-08-24, 07:54

Greetings all - I'm very new to this environment and I hope that the following questions apply to this corner of the site, or, whether the frequency heading is the correct option:-
I can draw in Waddington and Scampton, so far, from here in South Lincolnshire.

1) I am confused as to the differentiation between, for example, Waddington Par, Approach, Tower, Zone, Atis, Departures, Director, Operations.

2) Which of these are the main ones to which I need to set my scanner (Yupitero mv7100).

3) Under Wainfleet, what do the initials S and P mean?

Hope I don't offend those experts among you - I'm eager to learn!

Location : Hemel Hempstead, UK Spotter Watch Member : No

Hi and welcome!

I can answer question 1... Go to this link: http://fightercontrol.forumotion.com/aviation-resource-and-jargon-centre-arjc-f14/air-traffic-control-functions-t48.htm

With question two, go to: http://www.milscanners.co.uk/frqdb.html This wholly depends on you testing out frequencies and see which ones you can pick up. I tuned all the London Mil freqs and deleted which ones I didn't hear anything on.

I have no idea about question 3! Maybe a local member can answer that one!

Location : various

Haven't looked at the data but I'd guess that P= Primary and S= Secondary

Subject: Re: Airfield Frquency Areas 2009-08-24, 09:58

I can confirm dervishs info of Primary and Secondary. However they are not stuck too religiously. Wainfleet can often be heard 'working' the secondary freq. throughout the whole contact from initial contact to leaving the range.

The primary is often used , for the initial contact and request to join, or for a general enquiry to see if an aircraft can 'bootleg' which means have a run or two without an appointment

Subject: Airfield Frequency Areas 2009-08-25, 13:22

A big thank you to Demon for your advices and to Dervish and thebluebeard for yours.

I'm still pondering on tower, departure and ATIS (as in the Waddington frequency grouping)all of which have aloted frquencies.

Anyone out there have an idea as to their function?

Location : various

The tower gives the permission to land/line up/takeoff ie. the actions that involve the active runway
Departure is a RADAR function for departing aircraft ie. after takeoff and before going to area RADAR
ATIS (and DATIS) are automated messages detailing the current active runway and airfield conditions. For airfields with multiple runways there may be more than one ATIS freq. Similarly for busy airfields there may be an arrival and a departure ATIS freq

I'm sure that if you actually monitor each of the frequencies you'll quickly get the hang of what each is actually being used for both generally and at specific airfields/times of the day.

Location : Hertfordshire Spotter Watch Member : No

One thing to note with ATIS.

It is usually a pre-recorded message giving the airfield local weather and other information, which transmits on a continuous loop. Depending on how your set your scanner up, if it detects a signal on the ATIS frequency, it may lock on to this signal and not drop it, or at least hold on to it for a long period. This minimises it's time spent searching for activity on other signals you might want to hear more of eg tower, approach etc.

It gets a bit repetitive after around the third or fourth time through so, while it's a useful frequency to store on your scanner, you might not want to include it in the list of frequencies that are repeatedly scanned. On my scanner you can set a frequency to 'scan skip' ie the frequency is stored but the scanner just jumps past it while searching for active signals (not familiar with the Yupi but I guess it will have something similar). You can then select it manually when you actually want to hear what the conditions, runway in use etc are, and go back to scanning the other frequencies once you've heard all there is to hear on ATIS.

Not a big problem, but it may be a better way of hearing the real action.

hertsman

Subject: Airfield Frquency Areas 2009-08-31, 10:51

Thanks very much to Dervish for your further reply and to Hertsman.

Good information that I can act upon.