A MATZ (Military Air Traffic Zone) surrounds many of the smaller military airfields in United Kingdom airspace. It has been described as a "figment of the RAF's imagination" in that it has no legal status from the point of view of civilian aircraft - other than a request from the airforce for transiting traffic to call the controlling authority.
Generally, a MATZ consists of a circle of airspace 5 nautical miles in radius centred on the airfield (SFC to 3000ft AAL) with one or more 4nm wide "stubs" extending an additional 5nm from the airfield (1000ft AAL to 3000ft AAL). Typically, the stubs "protect" the most common instrument approaches.
The matz command allows the drawing of standard MATZs. More complex combined zones (CMATZs) are not supported.
Note that the .EWM file format has no concept of MATZs. MapComp converts the specification of the matz command into a sequence of short straight lines in the .EWM file - one segment for the main circle and one for each stub.
The matz command terminates any segment which is being constructed and forms one or more segments on its own - it does not form part of any following segment.
The syntax of the matz command is:
| matz <centre> [ <stub-bearing> ] * |
| <centre> | The latitude and longitude (in the standard format) of the centre of the MATZ. |
| <stub-bearing> | Zero or more bearings (°T) of the centre lines of the stubs. These must be integer values in the range 0° to 359° inclusive. |
For examples of the matz command see the Brize Norton example.