English in Notams

[PilotDAR]

For the VFR flying I do, I check notams occasionally. Today I did, as I knew there was one for the airport of my intended arrival. After finding it on the Nav Canada website, from in between many numbers, I extracted this:

CYLS HIGH SPEED MIL JET ACFT ACT

Should I interpret that to mean there will be a high speed military jet aircraft act when I arrive? I'll watch!

Okay, after thinking about it, I think maybe they mean that these jets will be active, but I cannot be certain. I phoned Nav Canada. The nice lady seemed uncertain about the precise meaning too. But, she was very pleasant to speak with.

In a post TELEX and SITA message world, in which I can read thousands of posts on FB about someone's dog, or what they had for dinner, or here, about someone's expired license booklet, or what kind of oil they prefer - all in complete, whole word English, why can't Nav Canada use whole words too? I paid my Nav Canada bills whole!? And yes, I'm one of those people who texts my kids back to ask for an explanation for "UR" or "CUL8R"...

Who's with me? Shall we ask Nav Canada to default to whole words, in grammatically correct sentences, to convey what we are asking to be told, when we search notams or weather information?

[digits_]

Who's with me? Shall we ask Nav Canada to default to whole words, in grammatically correct sentences, to convey what we are asking to be told, when we search notams or weather information?

And get rid of the all caps thing as well while you are at it. Then people would actually read all that stuff for a change

[Big Pistons Forever]

They can't use plain language otherwise we might have XTSV WDLY INCRG DVLPG UNDERSTANDING OF WX RPRTS THRUT SYS PROB HI

We can't have that now can we

[Team Firecracker]

I thought they were conserving vowels for the war effort

[AuxBatOn]

NOTAMS accronyms can be found at page 121 of this: https://www.navcanada.ca/EN/media/Publi ... sue-EN.pdf

NOTAMS are written this way because it is easier for machine to decode and correlate. That's how ForeFlight & al can display all that nice information overlaid on a map.

[PilotDAR]

NOTAMS are written this way because it is easier for machine to decode and correlate.

Ah... then best to add PLL UP PWR PLL UP PWR to the ILS identifier when certain crews fly 777's into San Francisco. That way the machine would know what to do!

But seriously, Foreflight can't figure out whole words? My Iphone knows what I'm typing in after a few characters, certainly bigger thinking devices can too! (Not to criticize your useful explanation Auxiliary Battery On). Let the feeble humans have the whole, unambiguous word, in correct grammar, so we can understand, and move on to good piloting, while the machines use their super speed processors to abbreviate the words, if that's what they need to do to understand!

[co-joe]

Maybe it's time Navcanada used twitter to disseminate notams. What 140 characters or less?

[photofly]

I vote PilotDAR as the Avcanada delegate to ICAO, to get this fixed.

[AirFrame]

NOTAMS are written this way because it is easier for machine to decode and correlate. That's how ForeFlight & al can display all that nice information overlaid on a map.

Foreflight doesn't have to spend any time (or precious computing cycles on limited portable devices) decoding if "WX" is written out as "weather." If the only change was to write out every abbreviation as its full english word, there would be no loss to machine readability, and a tenfold increase in human readability.

[AirFrame]

Maybe it's time Navcanada used twitter to disseminate notams. What 140 characters or less?

I'd advocate an RSS feed, personally.

[linecrew]

The acronyms used in NOTAMs can be found in the front part of your CFS, in the GENERAL section, right before the list of aerodromes and right after the list of acronyms used in the CFS itself (there are subtle differences between the two).

[PilotDAR]

The acronyms used in NOTAMs can be found in the front part of your CFS, in the GENERAL section, right before the list of aerodromes and right after the list of acronyms used in the CFS itself (there are subtle differences between the two).

Of course it can! I can ask my kids what POS and CUL8R means too. But in the information age, where we are no longer bound by a need for efficiency in volume of content being transmitted, need we have to go to a second reference to simply understand what the first thing was trying to convey?

[linecrew]

The acronyms used in NOTAMs can be found in the front part of your CFS, in the GENERAL section, right before the list of aerodromes and right after the list of acronyms used in the CFS itself (there are subtle differences between the two).

Of course it can! I can ask my kids what POS and CUL8R means too. But in the information age, where we are no longer bound by a need for efficiency in volume of content being transmitted, need we have to go to a second reference to simply understand what the first thing was trying to convey?

I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you were just on a rant. I thought you were looking for something helpful.

[PilotDAR]

Thanks for your kind thought of help! Spirit appreciated. But no, it's a rant!