🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello Dave,

I posted the original message, which is still accurate -- nothing has
been reinstated as of yet.

It is possible that I am biased.  I am a lightkeeper, trained and
certified to provide aviation weather information.  I am still under
strict orders from Coast Guard mangement not to provide any aviation
information to anyone -- not even to Coast Guard pilots who request it
directly.

NavCanada issued a press release on Dec. 20.  That is all.  They
failed to send a copy of it to the Coast Guard office that supervises
the lightkeepers, or to the lightkeepers themselves.  I received a
copy of the press release from a politician who had been pressuring
NavCanada to reinstate the aviation weather reporting.  I forwarded
the press release to the Coast Guard office in Victoria, and that was
the only information they had received when the lightkeepers called
the next day to ask for permission to provide aviation information to
pilots who request it directly.  Permission was denied.

We also heard the rumors that NavCanada will provide training and
calibration of weather instruments at lighthouses, but we have seen no
documentation of that report.  We did hear the original CBC report
that NavCanada was going to reverse it's decision and reinstate the
lighthouse aviation weather reports (
http://vancouver.cbc.ca/editorServlets/View?filename=bc_weather011220
).  That report turned out to be false, nevertheless it was never
retracted and has probably served effectively to fool the public and
get them off NavCanada's back.

Was this part of a plot to destaff lightstations?  We may never know. 
We do know that NavCanada did not consult with the pilots, the
lightkeepers, its own FSS staff, or the front line weather people at
AES before discontinuing the lighthouse aviation weather reports.  We
do know that NavCanada did not effectively distribute the original
announcement about the service being terminated on Dec. 14 -- some
users were caught by surprise when the lighthouse reports were no
longer available.  We know that NavCanada chose the worse time of year
to discontinue a safety service -- in mid winter, but they chose the
best time to slip something by the public -- just before Christmas. 
We know that NavCanada has been distributing a lot of misinformation
about the aviation weather program at lighthouses.  We know that
lightkeepers are not allowed to contact the weather supervisors at AES
except through a Coast Guard manager who has no weather training.  We
know that NavCanada did not take the necessary steps to ensure that
lightkeepers were allowed to resume providing "key aviation
information" after NavCanada announced that the information was
necessary, that lightkeepers were capable of providing it, and that
pilots could obtain it directly from lighthouses.  Perhaps the person
who characterized this as a "plot" knows more about the situation than
you give him credit for.

  -- Ron
 


davem@cs.ubc.ca (Dave Martindale) wrote in message news:<a0lb3t$2oo$1@trappist.cs.ubc.ca>...
> Actually, if you actually looked into the story, Nav Canada told the
> lighthouses to stop reporting aviation data because it wasn't up to
> aviation weather data standards - instruments weren't calibrated
> regularly, staff wasn't trained to report aviation weather, etc.
> 
> When lots of pilots made it clear that the data was useful, even if
> not strictly up to standards, Nav Canada changed their mind.  Now
> they *are* going to continue reporting the lighthouse-supplied data
> in a different format, pilots *will* be able to call lighthouses
> directly to get weather info again.  And Nav Canada will provide
> some additional support that they didn't before, in the form of
> instrument calibration and training.
> 
> So, all in all, it looks like pilots gained from this.
> 
> What I find interesting is that the original poster was quick to inform
> us about when the service was cancelled, but did nothing at all to
> inform us when it was reinstated a week later.  Can you say "biased"?
> 
> And now someone else comes along characterizing this as a plot, without
> apparently being aware that the service has been reinstated.
> 
> 	Dave