N. England & Irish Sea 20090514

[WAL 2T]

There's nothing like a major military exercise to ensure that commercial traffic remains "on-route"

[viking9]

It's economics that keeps commercial airliners on track.

[WAL 2T]

Usually see a fair bit of traffic transit the void between Y250 and L602 and further north, some of the Belfast outbounds to N. Europe. Heard a fair few "request direct blah..." requests KB'd over the past few days, moreso than normal.

[bailey_uk]

Yeh ive been listening last few weeks on 129.1 for that area to the outbound transaltlantic flights and they usually always at some point ask or get told to route direct to the 'entry point'.

The entry points seem to all be on the 10 degrees west line dont they? i.e '56n 10w' which is something I used to hear lots about 5 years ago, but nowadays do they just call that one Mimku?

[Jordan]

The coordinates are the actual NAT's, the entry point most of the traffic use for the initial transatlantic crossing is BALIX

[bailey_uk]

Balix is a very comon one yeh! but too far north for the flights shown on that screen shot I think.

From what ive seen and heard, flights entering via Balix would tend to route further up the mainland via MARGO, TURNBERRY etc.

[WAL 2T]

Yeh ive been listening last few weeks on 129.1 for that area to the outbound transaltlantic flights and they usually always at some point ask or get told to route direct to the 'entry point'.

The entry points seem to all be on the 10 degrees west line dont they? i.e '56n 10w' which is something I used to hear lots about 5 years ago, but nowadays do they just call that one Mimku?

Depending on the route there's a chain of them southwards at 15W starting at 15N. You can of course track them in on HF on the MWARA NAT frequencies.

[malc41]

They of course depend on the tracks in use for that day

[bailey_uk]

Yeh I had a go at scanning HF a few years ago using a Target HF3 receiver but sold it to a friend.
May just have to ask if I can borrow it for a few weeks!

[malc41]

Very useful device a HF receiver, especially for in bounds to this area.

[WAL 2T]

One of the few things left to listen to on HF now a lot of the military nets have all but shut down. Well that and the splatter from BT's illegal homehub adapters if you're unfortunate enough to have one nearby.

[bailey_uk]

One of the few things left to listen to on HF now a lot of the military nets have all but shut down. Well that and the splatter from BT's illegal homehub adapters if you're unfortunate enough to have one nearby.

Not sure if you mean the same thing, but a fair few years ago now, someone in a close vincinty of my receiver had an old style cordless telephone (pre DECT) and their conversations were easily heard around 4mhz.
Actually hearing a mastercard number and details being given over air made me go straight out and buy the latest DECT landline!

[WAL 2T]

The homehub adapters are devices which transmit ethernet over household wiring. BT have recently been supplying Comtrend units which do not comply with the necessary EMC requirements even though they have a CE mark. Net effect is potentially disastrous for anyone wishing to listen to HF in the immediate vicinity of one of these things due to the spurious and indiscriminate noise they radiate.

[malc41]

How do they get away with it. If it was the other way around the would be playing hell

[WAL 2T]

No doubt because the adapters had the CE mark. Exactly how they attained the CE mark is a matter of much debate. Apparently they have stopped supplying them now but you can still buy them from eBay. If you are a radio user and know that one is in use nearby you can request an Ofcom investigation although if you do this on suspiscion and the offending unit turns out to be legit you'd have to pay for the call-out.