Stirling_Taylor

OPARS have most USAF aircraft in their database. Just contact them at Fleet Numerical (FNMOC) in San Diego (or was it San Jose <shrug>).. they\'ll send you the software and give you an account. The good old USAF will only response when you organize things yourselves. I learnt that - you should too Use em.. works great.. If it don\'t work the way you like, email em (I can give you the email if you PM) and they\'ll actually change the software for you... Best service I\'ve found in the US Armed Forces.

No buddy, they were just incompetent. The volume of traffic was not that big. I\'ve had worse flying into an uncontrolled Air Field. The tower controllers just couldn\'t understand why it wasn\'t like Travis. As a result, aircrew had to change their tactics and redo the risk assessment because of these luddites. They just couldn\'t understand that when an aircraft in VMC with traffic on radar, TCAS and visually identified comes inbound it isn\'t a problem. Even when they had it explained they still LIED on their hazard report. That LTCOL should be drawn and quartered.

I\'ll think you\'ll find the Aussies (whilst flying Low Level) didn\'t fly LL along that route due to the risk. I won\'t say much more (BEADWINDOW?) but an Aussie tells me things have changed a little because of the USAF ATC guys having a cry a number of years ago. Apparently they wanted to \"normalize\" (i.e. couldn\'t handle low level aircraft faster than a helicopter (despite the aircraft accepting own seperation, having TCAS, Radar and visual identification of other traffic due to complete incompetence) Air Traffic. (I don\'t trust them in Maryland let alone on OIF) Sounds pretty strange to me - they want to \"normalize\" air traffic and deny Herc\'s flying tactical low level approaches yet they feel the need to drive to work in armored vehicles. I don\'t think they understand that a person who can shoot at a vehicle can shoot at an aircraft. I think Baghdad would have run better if it didn\'t have these guys running the tower. They ain\'t all that and a bag of chips :P

G\'day Greg, I met with the USN METOC people (who run OPARS) not to long ago. The problem they ran into was that the USAF wouldn\'t give them the performance information for their aircraft anymore (such as the C-17). USAF didn\'t want their guys using the NPFPS winding tool with CFPS as it would demonstrate that their ACFP wasn\'t as useful. PM me if you like and I can give you the e-mail address of the person to send your PFPS Flight Performance Model to - they\'ll add it. Last I heard USN were adding a \"Thin Client\" similar to Jeppesen Jetplan so you can use it for strat stuff when away from home (easier). In fact if your interested I can send you a PFPS form that prints your PFPS route out in a format exactly like Jetplan, calculates your 10% variable and appends your departure and arrival TAF\'s to the end of your form. The USAF really should create a PFPS Module that gets your enroute NOTAMs. It\'s really not that difficult but you have to raise the requirement as the end user before they\'ll do it.

Any of you guys used the USN OPARS system for flight planning. It performs Route Optimization including off airways. I\'m interested in hearing pro\'s / con\'s etc. in comparison to other systems including civilians systems. Cheers, ST

Why don\'t you just use PFPS and print out a TOLD card?