Thursday, July 28, 2005

Signal R535

I have been asked how much I payed for my Signal R535. I bought it for £200 on Ebay. Maybe it's more than it's worth, I'm not sure, but it is a great performer although a little dated and long-winded in it's operation (having to move the cursor along and then use the up and down arrows to tune the desired frequency) but I still like this radio. On my own testing it just has the edge on the trusty Yupiteru MVT7100, but there's very little in it.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Stoke Golding Airfield

I'll be visiting Stoke Golding airfield (near Hinckley - Leicestershire) which is not far from myself this weekend. They are having a fly-in this Saturday & Sunday 23rd & 24th July. It is not announced to the public for insurance reasons but visitors are welcome. Its a great little airstrip with a single east - west grass runway. There are several interesting types based here (Yaks etc.) and the fly-in will no doubt attract some interesting aircraft also. You can park right next to the edge of the strip which is great although on-airfield parking is very limited. The air/ground frequency allocated to Stoke Golding is 127.925Mhz. If you would like to make an announcement about any less well known fly-ins, then hit the comments button at the bottom of this post.

P.S. Take a look at Stoke Goldings own web site at http://www.StokeGoldingAirfield.co.uk

Friday, July 15, 2005

Emergency Call

I was listening to Swanwick control at 6.35am yesterday on 132.840 when Easyjet 3869 (Stansted To Alicante) made a 'PAN PAN PAN' call declaring a medical emergency and requesting a diversion to Gatwick. It was then passed to Dover sector on 134.9 and then Timba arrivals on 120.175. The aircraft was descending rapidly and I lost radio contact with it whilst working this sector. Has anybody else heard an emergency call you would like to share with other readers of the site?

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

East Midlands Airport (EGNX)

There have been some fairly drastic airspace changes to East Mids, my nearest airport recently. There are several new 'reporting points' in the vicinity including most notably, ROKUP to the North and PIGOT to the south. Both RP's have holding procedures if needed. Personally I don't think East Mids has enough traffic to warrant holding stacks but I imagine the procedures have been put in place to cover the traffic increases for years to come.

East Mids Frequencies:

Ground: 121.9
ATIS: 128.225
Tower: 124.00
Radar: 120.125 (not used much)
Approach: 134.175

Commercial Dep's to the North are transferred to Manchester Trent sector on: 133.4 / 134.425 / 133.8 (depending on which sectors are 'bandboxed' together.)

South dep's are transferred straight to London Terminal Control Welin sector now on 130.925.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Duxford

Dave has posted a comment regarding Duxford frequencies (flying legends show coming up). All I have listed is the AFIS (aerodrome flight information service) frequency of: 122.075. Anybody know of anymore frequencies?

Monday, July 04, 2005

Back From Waddington

Attended the Waddington Air Show on Saturday. The Icom IC-R2 proved ideal as I could 'pocket' the radio and when used with a good earphone, I could hear everything perfectly well. The frequencies in use were as follows:

VHF air show tower: 132.9
VHF ground: 122.1

Military traffic tended to use the normal ground (342.125) and tower (370.125) frequencies at Waddington.

There was some traffic on 134.55 although I didn't monitor it much it seemed to be used as an 'ops' frequency.

Its always worth entering all six 'common' air show frequencies which I have listed in an earlier post into memory channels and scanning when at an air show.