HFU HF Underground
Loggings => Utility => Topic started by: Looking-Glass on July 08, 2018, 0520 UTC
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Just found on an aviation web site that:
WSY-70 New York Volmet is off air on all HF bands until 04th December 2018, reasons unknown.
KVM-70 Honolulu Volmet is off air until April 2019, station refurbishment.
Australian Volmet has had a call sign change to VKA-931.
The above explains why Honolulu Volmet vanished from HF some months back.
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Very interesting. Can you share the link to that website please? Thank you. It's been at least a year since I last heard New York Volmet.
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So mystery solved for the disappearance of the Honolulu volmet..
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MDK2: Found reference to WSY-70 New York and KVM-70 Honolulu volmets on two aviation sites, cannot remember the second one but the first was:
www.dxinfocentre.com/volmet.html
Sorry, forgotten the second one... ;)
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According to one Mike Cooper, of GA, to the Jul 10, 2018 WORLD OF RADIO 1938 in reply from a FAA e-mail.
He quotes them as saying: "The New York area VOLMET broadcast is scheduled to be decommissioned and will not return to service. VOLMETs
are not cost effective to maintain and no longer widely used."
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They way things are going there will be little for the Utility DXer to hear in years to come, maritime and aviation are slowly vanishing from our HF bands.
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What's unclear here is:
1. Is this “email” replying an Official FAA action? or
2. Is this just a budget time opinion of one staff (whoever they are) member?
Also other than web links what is the ORIGINAL source for all this “out of service til Apr 2019” and “out of service til Dec 4” stuff.
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After a bit of searching the FAA NOTAMS I found:
1) NOTAM for KVM-70 Honolulu VOLMET which confirms that outage:
A1494/18 NOTAMR A0259/18
Q) PHZH/QSVAS//////
A) PHNL
B) 1804151522
C) 1904151500
E) VOLMET FREQ 2.863, 6.679, 8.828, 13.282 U/S
2) I did not find a similar NOTAM for WSY-70 but I did note on Hepburn's http://dxinfocentre.com/volmet.htm web page notes to the effect of outages for both Honolulu and New York Radio. Hepburn while not an "official" source is usually very reliable.
Perhaps I just did not ask the FAA NOTAM server the right question or perhaps that Gander VOLMET covers a similar geographic area and shares the same frequencies then the requirement for a NOTAM is a bit different or perhaps the NOTAM was issues in a different manner.
I think VOLMET broadcasts are going to continue to be important because they permit the transmission of AIRMETS and SIGMENTS in an automated fashion that reduces the operator workload on other HF and even VHF frequencies for flights departing from or approaching mainland areas in the same way they use ATIS for flights departing or arrival at airports - that is, the controller or operators will ask if they have (for example) SIGMENT ALPHA, if they don't then they will need to read it to them otherwise if they do they can then skip that bit.
Times are changing however, CPDLC (i.e. datalink) is becoming the primary method and HF is fast becoming secondary for much routine communications.
cheers, Graham near Ottawa Canada
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with the help of William Hepburn I have now located the FAA NOTAM for the New York Radio outage:
A3838/18 NOTAMN
Q) KZNY/QSVAS//////
A) KJFK
B) 1806042124
C) 1812042000
E) VOLMET 10.051, 6.604, 3.485, 13.270 U/S
I was just not asking the FAA NOTAM server the right question.
cheers, Graham near Ottawa Canada
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Thanks, Graham
That's it! U/S