Here in New England, Spring is finally taking hold. Really. The trees are leafing out, the temps are nice most every day and airports are waking from their winter slumber.
My friends in other climates around the country don't have the same experience. Of course my podcast partner Jeb, down in Florida, complains when the temperature gets below 50, but he can find many great flying days in every month of the year.
But if you're like me -- and don't really like the cold -- preflighting on an icy, below-freezing, windy ramp is not the dream of aviation fun.
But it's nicer now.
So I've been waiting for this nice weather, to return to flying, after too long an absence. Soon I'll head up to Sanford, or over to North Hampton, and see if I still know how to fly. Who knows, maybe by the next issue of this newsletter, I'll have good news to report.
— Jack
The podcast's Favorite Aviation Agency is once again trying to modernize the Notice To Air Missions Notice To Airmen (NOTAM) system. The latest in ongoing attempts to improve dissemination of facility outage and status information, formally begun in 2011 when the now deceased U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced legislation in response to an FAA enforcement action against him for landing a Cessna 340 on a closed Texas runway, consists of tapping a consulting firm to do the deed on an accelerated schedule.
Even with a U.S. Senator's attention, it's hard to find any real changes in the NOTAM system, which often seems more focused on obstacle-light outages than, say, runway closures or revised instrument approach procedures. The system received widespread visibility in January 2023, when it failed outright, which was blamed on a contractor's error, and resulted in widespread ground stops. During another outage, in February 2025, the agency was forced to use a backup system, again disrupting operations. This time will be different, promises the agency's new leadership.
"It's time our technology enters the 21st Century. NOTAM modernization is the first step as we work to deliver an all-new air traffic control system that makes air travel safer and more efficient," U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in announcing the latest modernization effort. To perform the work, the FAA selected CGI Federal, a U.S. subsidiary of Canada-based CGI, Inc., which provides information technology services in defense, diplomacy, intelligence, healthcare and the environment sectors, among others. According to the agency, CGI Federal is on "an accelerated schedule" to deliver the modernized NOTAM system by July 2025, while targeting operational deployment by September 2025. What could go wrong?
STORY: generalaviationnews.com "FAA accelerates new notam system"UCAP videos, exclusively for Patreon Tier One members.
Since the previous issue of this newsletter, Jeb and Jack got together TWICE to record exclusive video podcasts for our Patreon supporters.
The first was while Jack was still in Florida and they sat down in front of Jeb's Debonair. A couple of weeks later, they got on a video call to sort out some of the odd stories lately in the world of General Avitaion.
Don't miss out on any of the exclusive UCAP content. Become a Tier One or higher UCAP Patreon member of Uncontrolled Airspace.
An Alaska Airlines flight into Jackson Hole, Wyoming, had to divert at the last moment, while on the approach to landing, to instead land at Salt Lake City. The reason? The pilot wasn't checked out to land at that mountain airport.
Jeb and I spent some time in the most recent episode talking about this, and we each had slightly different takes on how this might have happened, but we agreed that somebody goofed.
Next episode, Amy joins us.
About the time you're reading this newsletter we'll be recording the next episode of the podcast. Amy Laboda will be joining us so Jeb and I will have to be more careful than usual about making things up.
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One of the highlights of the recent Sun 'n Fun Fly-in, for us anyway, was the UCAP episode we recorded, and livestreamed, from the SNFRadio studio deck. You may have already listened to the audio of that podcast from our feed, but if you haven't gotten enough you can watch the replay of the video livestream of that episode.
Use this link, and if it doesn't take you directly to the start of our episode you can fast forward to 4 minutes 39 seconds.
In the most recent episode of The Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast.
In the latest episode of the podcast Jeb and Jack get together online to talk about the latest in General Aviation goings on.
We talked about the weird Alaska Airline pilot diversion. The ongoing closing of a historic Flight Service service. And a new lease on life for some legendary aircraft checklists.
Listen to the episode in your podcast feed or at UncontrolledAirspace.com.
We've all seen the racks of plastic CheckMate laminated checklists for a wide variety of aircraft in our local pilot shop. Like many of us, Barry Munsterteiger loved these lists. And also like many of us he liked to modify the lists to add his own items. Unlike most of us, Barry took it to the next level.
He was unable to plastic-laminate his custom lists to the quality of the CheckMate lists. So he reached out to the company, hoping they might help him finish his lists. But they did better than that.
CheckMate owners Rich and Carol Lang had been thinking about retiring from running the company, and Barry's call prompted them to offer him a chance to take over the business.
He said yes.
Now he's working on upgrading the catalog of lists, and moving the company into a new era.
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We're running a bit behind schedule on getting this newsletter to you, so let's get out the fork. We just finished up with Sun 'n Fun, and Oshkosh is looming large. Along the way, there will be other good stuff coming in future issues of UCAP's Vectors newsletter. In the meantime, become a free Patreon follower to receive notifications when new issues are out!
See you again in a few weeks.
-- Jack
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