In article ,
Jose wrote:

While I'll
miss that convenience, I can't see any way I can justify the cost to the
federal government of having a person read me stuff on the phone that I
could have just as easily read myself on DUATS had I been a little more
organized or a little less lazy.

Actually, I find an advantage to it. If you get NOTAMS, you will (by
yourself) be presented with reams of irrelevant stuff, but you don't
know what's irrelevant until you read through it. Ditto text weather at
fifteen stations near you, near your destination, enroute, etc. A
briefer who has seen all this stuff all day can sift through junk and
pick out the important pieces. That is valuable.

Jose

I've also had briefers filter out stuff that was important to me. I'd
rather look at it all and decide what's important and what's not.

A classic example happened to me about a year ago. I got a duats briefing
and saw that R-5206 was hot by notam. This is a small restricted area near
West Point, NY. It's maybe 15 miles from HPN.

I was flying with a student and asked him to brief me. He gave me a good
rundown on the weather, but omitted to tell me about R-5206. I asked him
how he got his information, and he said he called FSS. I made him do it
again. He came back and said I was wrong, R-5206 was not hot. So, we
called FSS a third time and put it on speaker. My student asked for a
briefing for a 25 mile radius of HPN, and sure enough, the briefer said
nothing about R-5206. I then explicitly asked him about it, and he said
that it was indeed hot. So, what's going on here?

It turns out that R-5206 gets it's notams filed under IGN, which itself is
more than 25 miles from HPN. So, it didn't come up in the briefers 25 mile
filter. I just routinely ask duats for a 50 mile radius, so it comes up.

With DUATS, I know how to ask for exactly what I want, and how to filter
it. With a human briefer, I have to rely on the judgement of somebody I've
never met to pick and choose, and sometimes I have to play 20 questions
with him. I'll take the computer any day.

Why briefers think I care about an unlit crane 240 feet AGL 4 miles from
the runway, on a day VFR flight, I have no idea.