Airshow Season Almost Over!

With airshow season almost over I wondered if any readers would like to share any notable experiences from airshows you may have attended this year. Unfortunately I only managed to make it to Waddington this year which was a little disappointing as there was a notable absence of foreign participation. Anything you would like to share?

Heathrow Frequencies

I have received a couple of requests for frequencies at Heathrow so here goes:

Approach:
119.725
120.4
127.525
134.975
Departure ATIS:
121.85
Arrival ATIS:
128.075
Clearance Delivery:
121.975
Ground:
121.7
121.9
Radar (special VFR):
125.625
Tower:
118.5
118.7
124.475

Thanks all, Mark.

Holidays!

Sorry It's been a bit quiet lately as I have just returned from two weeks in the Greek island of Crete. We were in fact, located about 7 miles out on the approach to Heraklion airports runway 27. I have to say, I have never seen a holiday airport as busy as this. At times there were arrivals every few minutes, but at least I was treated to a great view of the wide variety of aircraft that operate in and out of this airport.
Everything from regional turboprops such as ATR's and Dash 8's which appear to be operated on flights from other islands such as Rhodes to the usual Airbus and Boeing models carrying holidaymakers. I think there was also some Tupolevs (154's?) carrying Russian and/or Ukrainian holidaymakers
I didn't dare take my radio scanner (Uniden Bearcat BR330T) as the Greeks don't look to kindly on that sort of thing if they should discover it, but I'm sure it would have made interesting listening. That's all I have time for right now, but if you have any info you would like to share regarding holiday airports or otherwise please hit the comments button, thanks. Mark.

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Changes To Airspace At Newcastle, Bristol & Cardiff

Significant changes to the airspace arrangements at Newcastle were introduced on 6th July 2006.
These changes increased the area of controlled airspace around the airport, designed to improve the safety of commercial flights arriving or departing.
Major changes at Cardiff/Bristol will come into effect on 31st August 2006..
The region surrounding Cardiff and Bristol will be enclosed in a new Class D area of controlled airspace enabling flights to approach and leave the airports under the jurisdiction of air traffic controllers.
This change will take place on 31st August 2006.
Prior to this, many flights arriving or departing the two airports had to fly through Class G airspace, meaning that they were not under the control of ATC.
Other traffic, unknown to ATC, were a constant problem for the controllers as the legal conditions relating to Class G airspace meant that the pilots did not even have to speak to ATC.
Even hot air balloons, launched from a site close to Bristol airport, were frequently encountered by flights approaching runway 27.
The new arrangements will include a series of Standard Instrument Departure Routes (SID’s) and Standard Arrival Routes (STAR’s), similar to those already in use at most large UK airports.

Thanks to Graham Duke for submitting this information.

Message From Graham Duke Re: MVT 8000 Radio Scanner

"Re the query from moris.jose about a manual for the MVT 8000, my base station is a MVT 6000 which I believe is almost identical as far as operating instructions are concerned.He is welcome to a copy of the manual, and I will email him soon."

Thanks Graham - Mark

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Yupiteru MVT 8000

A reader has requested some help in finding a manual or copy of a manual for the above scanner. I believe one of our regular contributors, Graham Duke has this radio? If anyone can help please email: moris.jose@gmail.com

Airshow Common Frequencies

I have posted these frequencies in the past but it is worth mentioning them again as we are in airshow season.
The following are all listed as frequencies allocated for airshow use:

121.175
130.5
130.625
130.675
132.9
134.55

It is always worth including these in your 'scan' when attending airshows.

I am hoping to put the 'close call' feature to the test on my Uniden Bearcat BR330T when I attend Waddington airshow next week, basically the scanner can be set to 'hunt down' strong local transmissions and will then immediately tune to them and store the frequency in memory if required. It will be interesting to see how effective this really is, I'm hoping to sniff out some unknown frequencies that might be in use at the base!

cheers for now, Mark.

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RAF Waddington Airshow

I must firstly apologise for not posting in recent weeks, I have been very busy with work.

Well airshow season is upon us! I do not get the opportunity to attend many shows but I am attending Waddington this year. I will be camping during the airshow weekend of 1-2nd July very close to RAF Coningsby and making the fairly short commute to the show on Saturday only.

Waddington has been a great show in years gone past and it is billed as the biggest show the RAF themselves organise however, looking at the list of aircraft taking part in the flying display it seems very short on foreign airforce participation particularly concerning fast jets. No F16's no mig29 or SU27 etc? and what with the RAF not displaying a Tornado F3 or Jaguar it is not looking particularly good value for money. Maybe there are other display participants that won't be confirmed till very late in which case I apologise for being to critical, I would be interested to hear what any other Waddington veterans think?

Airband

The mighty A380 Airbus is visiting the UK today (thursday 18th May) and will be flying in to Heathrow from Berlin, I understand it's due about midday? anybody have any more info on this?
And just a brief reminder as we head towards summer (though you wouldn't know it from the weather!) it can be interesting to listen to the 'common' allocated frequencies for gliding, microlights and balloons etc.

129.975 gliding
130.1 gliding
130.125 gliding
130.4 gliding
122.475 balloons
122.95 helicopters
129.9 balloons/gliders/paradrop sites
129.825 microlights

Cheers for now, Mark.

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New Airband Scanner Arrives!

I have now received my Uniden Bearcat BR330t scanner which I have had to import from the US as it isn't available here. After forking out around £250 by the time I had paid for UPS delivery AND the dreaded import duty, I was hoping it was worth it.
This scanner has the 'Nascar' logo across the front as it has some special facilities for race fans in the US but after doing some research on the net, this scanner had the features I wanted specifically for airband listening (full VHF & UHF coverage included).
Wow! where do I start with this scanner, the functions included are brilliant and it's completely different to any scanner I have had before. Firstly it has up to 2500 'dynamic ' memories which basically means there is no set structure to the memory banks, the scanner simply has a memory area a bit like a computer to store any memory channels and banks that you create. Firstly you can create up to 200 'systems', for instance, I have a system called 'Mil Air'. Within that system I can then create up to 20 groups eg. I have groups within the 'Mil Air' system called 'Brize Norton' & 'Mildenhall' etc. Within those groups you can simply add as many channels as you want and also assign a name to them all (all systems, groups and individual channels can be given upto a 16 character name).
I have now added several hundred frequencies divided by about four systems all containing many groups and my current memory usage is just 6%!!

In addition, you can lock out any number of systems, groups or individual channels, and it scans at an amazing 90 channels a second (searching is 140 steps a second!).

Sensitivity and audio quality are on a par with my 'benchmark' Yupiteru MVT7100 (at last a worthy successor with all the facilities I could want!).
I will post again soon on my further findings and tell you all about the 'close call' feature included on this scanner. Cheers for now, Mark.