If I’m planning any kind of cross-country flight, even something reasonably short like LG->Old Buck, I’ll check the NOTAMs. It could be argued that it’s worth checking them anyway even for local flying … I shall do that in future.
I’ve always had a slight mistrust of the areas of influence on the NOTAMs — those indicating let’s say that a VOR is out of service have quite a large area of influence, so even if you’re out Norfolk way you might be within the area for Brookmans Park perhaps, so it’s a pointless bit of info for GA types. There’s also some NOTAMs that have quite a small radius but that I’d like to know about anyway.
I’ve looked at NotamPlot, and do use it to get an idea of what’s being reported, but my still-preferred mechanism is to get a complete FIR briefing and read (or at least skim) each item in there. Yes, it takes a bit longer, but frankly not that much longer, maybe 10 minutes. And if you’ve got the whole briefing then if you change your mind about where you’re going to go you don’t need to get a brand new briefing.
In summary I’d rather it gave me too much information and I filtered it myself, than I accidentally gave it too narrow a filter and it missed out something important.
I’ve not done any flying (other than as a passenger) in the USA, so I’ve never tried their way of briefing where you ring them up and tell them what route you’re taking and they’ll give you the weather, NOTAMs etc, so I can’t comment on how effective that is.
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