Flight Service Transitions to Leidos Pilot Web Portal

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Walboy

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I heard it was going to be done away with, but didn’t know exactly when. I really enjoy using DUATs, so I’ll be sad to see it go.

The end of an era in some sense, it’s been around for a long time!
 
Leidos is much better. I quit using DUATS back in 2013 and bummed around with phone until their web thing came online. Really the only problem was that some idiot contractor tried to disable pasting of passwords by tinkering with Javascript. Of course it was easy to bypass.
 
I got the same email and signed up today. I filled out my profile and poked around the website, and my initial take is that it's pretty cool.
 
Sigh... there's this big discussion going on in an instrument flying Facebook group with some guy convinced this simple announcement that the 25-year DUATS arrangement is going away means the end of telephone briefings and pretty much the end if the world as we know it.
 
I never like DUATS. Planning a 2 hour flight from WV to KY, I'd get a 15-20 page printout including weather and NOTAMs as far away as NYC and Miami . . . . That's just too much garbage to wade through looking for pertinent information so that I could then pick out what was important.
 
zaitcev said:
Really the only problem was that some idiot contractor tried to disable pasting of passwords by tinkering with Javascript. Of course it was easy to bypass.
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How? A lot of other websites do that, too.
 
Played with it some, not so bad. Time to force myself into ICAO flight plans anyway, I'll use this as an excuse to change, lots of new tricks at once for the old dog.
 
Hank S said:
I never like DUATS. Planning a 2 hour flight from WV to KY, I'd get a 15-20 page printout including weather and NOTAMs as far away as NYC and Miami . . . . That's just too much garbage to wade through looking for pertinent information so that I could then pick out what was important.
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There are options to pick only the specific information you want.

Weather>>>>weather briefings>>>abbreviated briefing>>>> then route or location or defined radius or state/collective.
 
Dana said:
How? A lot of other websites do that, too.
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Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dont-****-with-paste/nkgllhigpcljnhoakjkgaieabnkmgdkb

Firefox: open the about:config webpage and change setting dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled to false

Others: Google :)
 
wxbrief.com is pretty good... I've used it for the last year or so.... But now I rely completely on ForeFlight...If I'm really inquisitive about something I'll call to talk to a briefer, but being I'm VFR only, that's very rare....
 
If duats goes away, I wonder what foreflight will do for a replacement service so you can get a real weather briefing through them.
 
mondtster said:
If duats goes away, I wonder what foreflight will do for a replacement service so you can get a real weather briefing through them.
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The same thing they've been using for years. DUATS has not been a FF requirement for quite a while. Maybe about 5 years it's been optional? I removed my DUATS account fro FF when it changed. Like many other EFBs, the connection is, I think, to Leidos, not DUATS.

From the Leidos Flight Service site:

upload_2018-3-14_15-37-46.png

The only requirements for a "legal" weather briefing are (1) it covers at least the territory of a standard briefing and (2) there's a record of it in case questions arise.
 
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midlifeflyer said:
The same thing they've been using for years. DUATS has not been a FF requirement for quite a while. Maybe about 5 years it's been optional? I removed my DUATS account fro FF when it changed. Like many other EFBs, the connection is, I think, to Leidos, not DUATS.
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So you can get a briefing under the "flights" tab without having your duats login and password entered? I never realized that. I don't think it was always this way, or else I wouldn't have bothered entering my duats information.

midlifeflyer said:
The only requirements for a "legal" weather briefing are (1) it covers at least the territory of a standard briefing and (2) there's a record of it in case questions arise.
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I realize that. But there are a lot of people that don't understand it.
 
mondtster said:
So you can get a briefing under the "flights" tab without having your duats login and password entered? I never realized that. I don't think it was always this way, or else I wouldn't have bothered entering my duats information.
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It wasn't always that way. At one time it was required. Take your DUATS inop out and you'll still get the briefing. I suspect the setting will be removes soon, but folks who still have their login probably won't even notice.
 
Zeldman said:
There are options to pick only the specific information you want.

Weather>>>>weather briefings>>>abbreviated briefing>>>> then route or location or defined radius or state/collective.
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not any more ;)
 
midlifeflyer said:
It wasn't always that way. At one time it was required. Take your DUATS inop out and you'll still get the briefing. I suspect the setting will be removes soon, but folks who still have their login probably won't even notice.
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Thanks for the info. I didn't realize foreflight had removed the requirement to have an account.
 
mondtster said:
Thanks for the info. I didn't realize foreflight had removed the requirement to have an account.
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It was January 2014:

ForeFlight now primarily files flight plans directly via the modernized Lockheed Martin Flight Services AFSS interfaces (we also continue to file via DUATS if that is your preference). One of the benefits when using the AFSS interface is that Flight Service specialists will see flight plan details and can therefore more quickly provide you briefings and open VFR flight plans. Another benefit is faster search and rescue response times in the event they are needed.​

https://blog.foreflight.com/tag/duat/
 
Dana said:
How? A lot of other websites do that, too.
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In this case, I opened the debugger and deleted the stub function that they inserted; pasted the password; then allowed the browser to remember the password. Nowadays some sites even go as far as disrupting browser's ability to substitute passwords, but it wasn't the case with Leidos.
 
mondtster said:
If duats goes away, I wonder what foreflight will do for a replacement service so you can get a real weather briefing through them.
Click to expand...

ForeFlight repackages the briefing supplied by DUATS or Leidos (1800WXBrief.com). It is really transparent to the pilot and DUATS.COM going away will have no impact on ForeFlight users.
 
midlifeflyer said:
Like many other EFBs, the connection is, I think, to Leidos, not DUATS.
Click to expand...

The original DUATS providers were DUAT.COM and DUATS.COM. The current DUATS II contract is with DUATS.COm and Leidos (1800WXBRIEF.COM), so Leidos is a DUATS provider. The original contract was for a teletype system that would work with those ultra fast 300 Baud Modems and was always text based. ForeFlight had to simulate typing all the information into DUATS.COM, one field at a time. With Leidos, there is a modern API and a filing object is sent to Leidos. The Leidos interface allowed the ability to Amend, Cancel, Activate, and Close Flightplans. When ForeFlight added support for Leidos, support for ICAO flightplans was also added. ForeFlight never implemented ICAO support for the ancient teletype interface used by DUATS.COM. Leidos also operates all the US FSS except for Alaska. This has no effect on being able to call FSS and talk to a briefer, that is if you can get past the phone system. So I say Briefer, it says What State are you departing from or processing a NOTAM for ... ? South Carolina. Did you mean South California? No. South Carolina Did you mean South Dakota, No !!!!! Well yes.
 
So can I still get a telephone briefing or no? Call me crazy but interacting with people instead of a machine is still a good thing in my book.
 
TRocket said:
So can I still get a telephone briefing or no? Call me crazy but interacting with people instead of a machine is still a good thing in my book.
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Interacting with people usually costs me a few hundred an hour...
 
I think I first used DUAT when it started in 1988 or so. Nothing like a smoking 1200 baud dial up, but man, what a good deal it was! There was also a telephone access system (TIBS) you could call and type in (dial in) and get individual weather reports and you could dial in to get TWEBS, which where just a waning thing in '88.

As far as apps go, the best ever was the DTC DUAT app. Nothing fancy. Just text and graphics (on request). You could literally brief and file in one hand. CSC's apps or mobile sites just seemed too slow to me. Leidos' website works on a tablet and a laptop, but is a giant bandwidth hog, and doesn't have a mobile version optimized for small screens or limited bandwidth. Sometimes all I need is a text brief and that's where DTC's app/mobile site was just awesome.

Voice still works great. Called 1-800-WX-Brief just the other day. On the hands free I was getting ready while the briefer read the weather.

FSS is going to continue to get the squeeze. When ATC makes the full transfer of getting clearances through center/approach facilities, which is in progress, the contacts at FSS via voice will probably drop off even more.
 
Richman67 said:
I think I first used DUAT when it started in 1988 or so. Nothing like a smoking 1200 baud dial up, but man, what a good deal it was! There was also a telephone access system (TIBS) you could call and type in (dial in) and get individual weather reports and you could dial in to get TWEBS, which where just a waning thing in '88.

As far as apps go, the best ever was the DTC DUAT app. Nothing fancy. Just text and graphics (on request). You could literally brief and file in one hand. CSC's apps or mobile sites just seemed too slow to me. Leidos' website works on a tablet and a laptop, but is a giant bandwidth hog, and doesn't have a mobile version optimized for small screens or limited bandwidth. Sometimes all I need is a text brief and that's where DTC's app/mobile site was just awesome.

Voice still works great. Called 1-800-WX-Brief just the other day. On the hands free I was getting ready while the briefer read the weather.

FSS is going to continue to get the squeeze. When ATC makes the full transfer of getting clearances through center/approach facilities, which is in progress, the contacts at FSS via voice will probably drop off even more.
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Yeah, I was a DTC fan, not so much CSC.

I didn't come across the original DUAT until 1990 or 1991, after I got my private. But I used that lightning fast 1200 baud dial-up to get my briefing and create the flight plan for my 1992 Instrument checkride.
 
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