Comm Failure

🇮🇱 עברית

Comm failure

One button for a lost radio. 📵 Comm fail is in the footer beside Record and Location, and on a phone it is the red button in the top strip, always in view and apart from the tabs. It works like Location: it lights while comm failure is on, and a second press ends it.

Three fields publish a comm-failure procedure: Herzliya (LLHZ), Haifa (LLHA) and Rosh Pina / Mahanayim (LLIB). Pressing the button:

1. Finds where you are. If Location, a recording or the simulator is already giving a position, that is used. Otherwise the button switches Location on and waits for the first fix, with no time limit. A cold GPS can take a minute, and a route drawn from the wrong place would send a pilot with no radio the wrong way. While it waits, the card already shows Squawk 7600, with two ways out: Use map centre or Cancel. The map centre is used without asking only when there is no GPS to wait for (location refused or unavailable).
2. Picks the nearest field by the whole distance: from you to the entry point, then on to the field. The best entry for each field is the one with the shortest total, not the nearest entry. The nearest entry can be on the far side of the field.
3. Asks before replacing a drawn route. Undo brings the old one back.
4. Draws the route from NOW to the entry point to the field, with both legs at the entry's published altitude.
5. Turns the field's comm-failure chart on (Airfield Plates → Comm failure). If the plates are filtered to another field, the filter switches to this one.
6. Shows the card.

The card

• Squawk 7600, largest thing on it.
• The field and its distance, then the entry point and the altitude to fly.
• The tower's phone from the comm-failure chart, as a link that dials it.
• Light signals from the tower: the ICAO signals to an aircraft in flight, and how to acknowledge them (by day rock the wings, not on base or final; at night flash the landing or navigation lights twice). The list is open on larger screens and folded on a phone, where open it would cover the map. One tap opens it.
• Fly the comm-failure chart shown on the map. The drawn line only leads to the entry point. What to fly after the entry point is on the chart.
• Whether the route starts from your GPS position or from the map centre.
• The other two fields, with their distances.
• Cancel comm failure.

NOW follows the aircraft

While comm failure is on and a position is live, the first waypoint follows the aircraft (every 2 seconds, once it has moved more than 50 m). The first leg's bearing and distance stay measured from where you are, not from where you pressed the button. Following stops once you are on the entry leg, or when you edit the route. These moves are not Undo steps.

Cancel

Cancel comm failure on the card, or a second press of the button:

• puts back the route you had before, if the comm-failure route has not been edited since. An edited route is yours and stays, and a message says so;
• turns the comm-failure chart off, if the button turned it on, and restores the plates filter;
• turns Location off, if the button turned it on.

Across a reload

Switching language reloads the page, and so does an app killed mid-flight. Comm failure comes back after either, with the card in the new language, the button lit, NOW following and Cancel still able to put back the route from before. If the route was changed in the meantime, it does not come back.

Herzliya: training areas 3, 8 and 9

The Herzliya chart has two lines from BAZRA: 1,600 ft for arrivals from afar, and 1,200 ft from training areas 3, 8 and 9. Inside one of those areas the return is via BAZRA at 1,200 ft, even when another entry point is nearer. The card says which area you are in. Outside them, BAZRA is flown at 1,600 ft, and the card mentions the 1,200 ft variant.

The area outlines were traced from the Herzliya training-areas chart. They are accurate to about 100 m, so close to a boundary, trust the chart.

The data

Field	Tower phone (chart)	Entry → altitude (ft)
LLHZ Herzliya	09-9719554	SFAIM 1200 · BAZRA 1600 (1200 from areas 3, 8, 9) · GNYAM 1200 · KNTRY 1200
LLHA Haifa	04-8729361	KRYON 2000 · AFFEK 2000 · GILAM 3000 · GALIM 1500
LLIB Rosh Pina	04-6136210	HULAT 3000 · AMNON 2500

Left out: Haifa's HASID and DUGIT (the chart puts them under controller approval) and Rosh Pina's magenta lines (helicopter routes). Entry points and altitudes live in docs/data/commfail.json and name nodes of the CVFR route graph. The coordinates come from the graph, so the two cannot drift apart.

Transcribed by hand from the charts. Check them against the current charts before you rely on them.

Related: GPS Track Recording · Phone layout · Airport charts · Extra Layers