NOTAM: Montana airspace temporarily restricted for national defense purposes | Hacker News Reader

NOTAM: Montana airspace temporarily restricted for national defense purposes

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88 pointsanigbrowl17 comments

Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker up there flying at 25K feet, amid reports that F-15s were scrambled out of McChord (possibly Portland ANG instead).

https://www.flightradar24.com/2f2ab347

Idea of ground conditions: https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/havre-mt-59501

Word is air assets are headed home for now and will possibly take down later/tomorrow. NORAD possibly loving this moment in general

(Gotta wonder...where are the people with superzooms? Rural news crews willing to tilt their cameras upward? Even 25x portable Canons? Or Samsung AI zoom assist? xD ...25K feet and significantly higher is not usually a huge problem for even basic superzooms, especially with setting sun as light source)

https://twitter.com/RepRosendale/status/1624579901608034306

Confirms it's an "object" that could interfere with commercial aviation. They will potentially shoot it down in the morning, but apparently not today.

Somewhat off topic, but I wonder why anyone still thinks it's a great idea of make NOTAMs into legal documents while forbidding any sort of markup or formatting that would make them even slightly easier to read, especially if you're busy trying a fly an aircraft.

Edit: I do know about the legacy transmission hardware. But it might be a good idea to make the NOTAMs a little shorter and more succinct, instead of filling them up with legalese which drastically lowers the signal:noise ratio.

Plaintext is the most universal of formats, and those whose job involves reading these all the time are probably not going to have any difficulties with it.

Don't pilots planning a trip in an area of NOTAM have to read it as well? Or do they just have to know there is a NOTAM somehow and just avoid the area?

A lot of it gets translated into other, digital forms.

> Don't pilots planning a trip in an area of NOTAM have to read it as well?

Yes, pilots are included in "those whose job involves reading these all the time". Every flight begins with a weather briefing, which includes NOTAMs near the route of flight.

Generally pilots will start with a graphical overview, and dive into the details of a TFR if the flight path intersects. If you're navigating safely around it, it can mostly be ignored.

> and those whose job involves reading these all the time are probably not going to have any difficulties with it.

On the contrary, they do. There are campaigns going on to change the system for years now.

https://ops.group/story/what-is-opsgroup-all-about/

https://deathtonotams.com

https://fixingnotams.org/a-field-guide-to-notams-the-book/

They have to be transmitted on legacy systems.

NOTAM uses the 5-bit ITA2 code (International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2) introduced in 1924. Probably too difficult/expensive to change now, considering all the systems it potentially goes through.

There are a lot of things in the aviation world that seem weird to those who work in an environment where everything gets thrown away and rewritten every couple of years.

Aviation infrastructure moves veeeeeerrrrry slowly. Heck, there are still DC-3s in commercial service (not just airshows or the like, but actual commercial service) and that plane is nearly 90 years old.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were still small airports who get these notices on a printing teletype or something of that nature.

It's irking how it's neither human-readable, nor standardized in a way that makes it easy for a computer to parse. I'd prefer one or the other. NOTAMS (And METARs, TAFs etc) look to be in a consistent shorthand, but aren't.

Because gut feelings about what would be better aren’t matched with reality. If professionals reading them ever actually had problems then it would be a matter for fixing. If not, change is an enemy, if it works don’t fix it, especially in life critical systems.

If professionals reading them ever actually had problems then it would be a matter for fixing.

Now that's funny.

> even slightly easier to read, especially if you're busy trying a fly an aircraft

Pilots read these on the ground, as part of their weather briefing. If you're reading about the TFR for the first time while you're airborne, you've made a mistake.

Update: NORAD says it was a radar anomaly and they didn't find anything

https://twitter.com/NORADCommand/status/1624596337890058240/...

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