Sunday, October 01, 2006

DoD FLIP Foreign Enroute/Planning Pubs Removed

As advertised some of the DoD FLIP enroute and planning publications have been removed from the public NGA website. Thanks to countries such as Australia who complained to DoD about offering aero material for free that they were charging for, the first to go were the foreign enroute and AP sups. Here is what is missing this morning (1 Oct 2006):

AP-2/2A and AP-4/4A, Africa, ENAME, EEA, PAA

The following pubs remain on the public website as of this writing:

Planning Document
AP1 North and South America (7 MB)
AP1A (2.61 MB)
AP1B (9.72 MB)
AP3 Pacific-Australasia-Antarctica (3.27 MB)
AP3A (1.98 MB)
GP General Planning (10.91 MB)
FIH Flight Information Handbook (24.71 MB)

Enroute Supplements
Caribbean/South America Supp (8.78 MB)
U.S. IFR Supp (17.83 MB)
U.S. VFR Supp (30.93 MB)

As I have written before these DoD pubs, while they do have some old info, are much more accurate than the FAA ATA-100 database that DoD sources told me the public could use instead. The NGA spokesman I talked to made a big deal during a phone interview that we would still have access to aero info via this ATA-100 database. But the facts are very plain that the FAA ATA-100 is no where near as comprehensive or accurate as the DoD pubs and, of course, does not include any of the foreign info or planning pubs we just lost.

So we in the milair community have suffered a major loss. To my friends across the pond in Europe, I know this has a big impact on you, especially with all the recent changes in the NATO bandplan and the 8.33 kHz spacing changes.

And to the greedy Australian government that started this mess, thanks a bunch for nothing you jerks. You are a large part of this problem, something I am sure most milair hobbyist won't soon forget or will cast a vote with their wallets. You won't get one red cent from me for any of your radio publications in the future and I hope others will follow suit as well.

Oh yes, any opportunity I get I will publish any and all Aussie Mil radio frequencies. If you have some to share, please pass them along.