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Greetings!
Where is
global warming when we need it? Yes I
know the Greens say global warming/climate change is causing our mess. But for the moment, color me Blue. This winter everything seems to be
frozen. I am not talking just about the
outside temperature. Congress is frozen
in gridlock. The President has just
announced a budget freeze. The
continuing resolution for reauthorizing the FAA budget continues yet
again. So far this year almost every day has seen temperatures in the teens here in
Virginia, and we are just digging out of our third major snowfall.
Once the
economy recovers and with it air travel, we will return to the old problem of
delays and all the inconveniences and disruptions we saw only a few years
ago. In this issue I am going to be discussing
a solution to this very serious problem.
Most of the articles below will be a summary of slightly longer postings
of mine in Hangar Talk now, or soon to come.
There have been a few minor technical changes
with Hangar Talk. I started this blog in
2006 as a place to comment on events and changes in the general aviation
industry. I have been using Google's
blogging technology but hosting Hanger Talk on my own server. For technical reasons I now host
Hangar Talk on Google's servers. The
only negative is that the URL for Hangar Talk has changed, but if you go to the
old URL you will be redirected automatically to the new address. I have added a subscription box to Hangar
Talk. If you want receive an email
notice when new articles are posted, there is now a way to make this happen.
If you would like to share this newsletter, just click on this button:
If your friend is already on my list,
they will not get a duplicate. If they are not, they will receive this
newsletter and an option to subscribe to future issues.
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Is NextGen Dead? Maybe Not
In the
State of the Union address the President proposed a budget freeze, which I
initially thought NextGen, the long overdue remaking of ATC, would be pushed
even further into eternity. However,
just two weeks later the White House asked Congress for a $1.14 billion budget
in Fiscal Year 2011 for NextGen, a 31-percent increase from the FY 2010 figure. There will be a lot of debate on the budget
so stay tuned.
In a
perfect world every airplane could fly the best route and takeoff and land on
time. Fuel burns and carbon emission
would be reduced. No one disagrees on
these points, but on funding NextGen there is little agreement. Understandably the airlines and business
aviation is not willing to pay for the expensive new equipment that is
necessary to fly in a NextGen system until they are assured that NextGen will
be in place on a date certain. Too often
the aviation community has made the investment and seen some new FAA driven
technology fail to be developed or pushed far into the future.
Over ten
years ago Canada "depoliticized"
their ATC system, which was a part of Transport Canada, the equivalent of our
Department of Transportation. Unshackled from their government except for
safety regulation, the independent and not-for-profit NavCanada jumped far
ahead of the United States in ATC service and technology - not quite NextGen,
but they are moving rapidly in that direction.
Is it possible that the debate over the budget
freeze could finally push the unshackling of the U.S. ATC system forward and
create for our country what every other non-third world nation has? An ATC system that pays for itself and
operates as any high tech business should. (I discuss this subject in slightly more detail in Hangar Talk, where I invite your comments.)
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The
ADS-B Dilemma In and
Out
ADS-B is a
key component of NextGen. This is a
proven technology that was first introduced in the U.S.
in Alaska,
the state with the highest per capita population of aircraft but with minimal
radar coverage, often challenging weather, and mountainous terrain. Australia was the first country with
full, nationwide ADS-B coverage. China created
one of the largest and most successful ADS-B systems in the world. However, partly due to the extensive radar
coverage, implementation in the U.S.
has been spotty. United Parcel Service
has been one of the few carriers to equip their aircraft with ADS-B. At their hub airport in Louisville, Kentucky,
where most of their operations are at night, UPS has seen an improvement in the
efficiency of their aircraft operations at this hub.
There are three components to ADS-B: A transmitting system in the aircraft that
identifies the aircraft's position - ADS-B/Out; a receiver in the aircraft
that receives the transmitted signal and displays the position of other
aircraft - ADS-B/In; and a receiving subsystem for message reception and report
assembly functions at the receiving destination, e.g. other airplanes and
ground stations. Here again Aircraft
owners are reluctant to install the equipment, especially the relatively
expensive ADS-B/In until they believe NextGen is a reality and the cost saving
will be realized.
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LORAN is Dead
So what is backing up GPS?
In January
the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Coast Guard division announced the
termination of all U.S. LORAN-C signals beginning Feb. 8, 2010. There was no mention of what if anything
would replace LORAN-C. This flew in the
face of a May 2009 report by an Independent Assessment Team that concluded that
the cost to decommission the LORAN system would exceed the cost of deploying
eLORAN.
Many
experts feel that maintaining LORAN-C while transitioning to eLORAN" is
very important for homeland security, marine safety and environmental
protection. eLORAN is the latest version
of LORAN and has been adopted by the UK and many European countries. eLORAN is operational in the UK. Full implementation in Europe
is expected be complete by 2022.
GPS is the
backbone of NextGen and other navigation systems. But just like the Internet, the other
wonderful and ubiquitous technology invented in the late 20th
century, GPS is subject to spam, or interference. GPS can be jammed. I searched on Google for "GPS jammers for
sale" and got 28,700 hits. The paid ad
at the top of the first Google result page read, "Professional GPS & GSM Blocker Manufacturer
from China Inquiry Now." Last month Google threatened to close down their
China domain as a protest
for an attack on the Google servers from China.
I
will be writing more about this subject in Hangar Talk. Please check in there and leave your comments
on this and any other subject.
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Worst Decade Ever
There Are Strange Things Done...
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun" so starts Robert Service's tale of the Cremation of Sam McGee. In Washington it happens at all hours. This video is the best comment I have seen on the last decade. Be sure not to miss the "Worst Decade Ever."
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