CHIRP

Sector: Aviation

  • A Sting in the Tail

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    Nicky Smith
    in ,

    Sunday 27th October was a perfect day for flying. My preflight complete and everything being normal, I taxied out, which was uneventful. I made my radio calls and proceeded to take off. However, as I was trundling down the runway and at about 50-55kts, the nose wheel just starting to lift, I got showered in…

  • …and West Ham won the FA cup

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    Nicky Smith
    in

    So that’s the cold war scene set, now if you are sitting comfortably, I’ll begin. That day I was the radar director responsible for directing traffic around the Honington radar pattern. However, hovering in the background of my consciousness was the realisation that that night at Shawbury there was a dinner night for all of…

  • CHIRP appoints first programme manager in Advanced Air Mobility

    CHIRP appoints first programme manager in Advanced Air Mobility

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    Michelle Nichols
    in

    CHIRP is pleased to announce the appointment of William (Bill) Dean as their new Advanced Air Mobility Programme Manager. Bill, a former military pilot who specialised in flight test, served with the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm for 23 years, firstly as a helicopter pilot and then for most of his career flying the Sea…

  • CHIRP appoints new Director of Aviation

    CHIRP appoints new Director of Aviation

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    Michelle Nichols

    CHIRP is pleased to announce the appointment of Nicky Smith as their new Director of Aviation. Nicky, who is a former military and commercial helicopter pilot, takes on the role following the retirement of Steve Forward who has been with CHIRP since 2020. Having started her aviation career almost 40 years ago, Nicky flew a…

  • Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) growing pains

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    Steve Forward

    This Edition’s ILAHFFT entries are taken from our US NASA ASRS[1] sister organisation’s CALLBACK publication Issue 537(October 2024) that highlights some misunderstandings, expectation bias, complacency and problems with overly complex message formats from CPDLC. CPDLC is a great tool, but crews need to use it with care to ensure that the entire message is understood, and controllers need to…

  • To cap it all…

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    Steve Forward
    in

    Our syndicate aircraft had been in and out of action for a few months over the summer as a consequence of some engineering work, following permit expiry. On resuming flying, two members of the group observed that the fuel tank was not venting correctly and that a vacuum was forming during flights, leading to a…

  • Video assets

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    Caian Keyes

    CHIRP Aviation Training Video CHIRP has recently produced an animated video (approx 6mins long) to highlight the key elements of our activities and encourage awareness of the CHIRP role and processes. The video can be accessed at the link below. CHIRP Aviation ‘About Us’ Video CHIRP has recently produced an animated video (approx 4mins long)…

  • Getting your game face on – time to focus on the task in hand

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    Steve Forward
    in

    It was Autumn 2014 and it was an afternoon shift.  At the time, there were numerous ‘Getting Your Game Face On’ posters around the Tower; they’d been on display for a while but if you weren’t into rugby they were pretty easy to walk past.  I thought it would be an idea, therefore, to share an experience of…

  • CHIRP Aviation Advisory Board Chairs explain what we do

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    Steve Forward
    in

    CHIRP has recently produced a video (approx 10mins long) voiced by our Advisory Board Chairs to highlight the key elements of our role and encourage awareness of our activities. The video can be accessed at the link below.

  • CHIRP Aviation Annual Report FY2023-24

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    Steve Forward
    in

    FY2023-24 saw the first full year of flying since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated removal of general travel and social restrictions in UK. Commercial aviation activities continued their recovery over the twelve months and reached pre-pandemic levels of flying towards the end of the reporting period, albeit with some interruptions in…

  • Stress, distraction and flying don’t mix

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    Steve Forward
    in

    It was back in 2002 and I was working for  a major Telecoms provider as part of their first team selling classified advertising in their new “Purple Book” in the North England region. I was recruited as I’d had considerable success in contract labour recruitment – a game that required a very high work ethic, lots…

  • There are no hyphens in “Jeppesen”

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    Steve Forward
    in

    It may be useful if I share my recent experience with the Jeppesen database upload into my AVIDYNE IFD 440. You can imagine a “Swiss Cheese” IFR approach scenario in which this could become a safety issue. In July 2023, I took out an annual subscription with Jeppesen for their European database. The methodology was…