Slide 1: Where to find documentation on the following presentation:
All about avionics
From the FAA web page for GPS:
click on:
GPS Related Websites
Glonass
Introduction to GLONASS
Up to main document
english
Keith Peshak's articles dedicated to satellite navigation
From the Coast Guard:
click on:
Links
Glonass
Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS)
Up to main document
english
Keith Peshak's articles dedicated to satellite navigation
From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Labs web page:
click on:
GPS/GLONASS Links
Coordinational Scientific Information Center of Russian Space Forces
English
Keith Peshak's articles dedicated to satellite navigation
From the International Glonass Experiment web page:
http://www.nima.mil/geospatial/products/GandG/ion/index.htm
click on:
Related Links
M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory GLONASS Group
GPS/GLONASS Links
Coordinational Scientific Information Center of Russian Space Forces
English
Keith Peshak's articles dedicated to satellite navigation
All about certification
http://www.teleport.com/~wjbarton
click on:
FAA assault on General Aviation
Gratefully, the technical credentials of the speaker, requested by EAA, for the introduction of the speaker, were spared the audience. None the less, retaliatory remarks were included:
My mother admonished me that not all people are either engineers or my aeronautical or electrical engineering students. She said I should teach everybody at least one thing, and suggested it should be a new word. She said, since I had invited a large contingent of FAA technical people to this forum, that a new word would be guaranteed, for them, if it was two or more syllables long. And she said I should define it by use of an example of something well known and similar to them. OK, mom, oxymoron, FAA Technological Center.
And she suggested that a highly technical and boring presentation should be preceded by a levity. OK, mom. This from http://www.av8r.net:
A transplant surgeon was researching the web for medical costs related to brain transplants, and was surprised to see an extremely high price quoted for replacement brains from deceased FAA Airworthiness Inspector donors. The posted price said "FAA Airworthiness Inspector Brains, $12,000/lb". The surgeon called the organ donor bank and inquired as to why such people commanded such a high price for their brains. The donor bank manager e-mailed back to explain: "You can't believe how many FAA we have to go through, just to come up with one pound of brains...And each tissue has zero on the Hobbs."
Now, I went to the FSDO to have the data in this talk certified. My airworthiness inspector said that I could do my people better if I explained an FAA abbreviation to them. Notice that "my people" thing there. Now, we here at Oshkosh try to accommodate. Folks, please pay attention to the following three word sentence. FAA is anachronism. The preceding sentence proven for you by the healthy and safe and growing aviation spectrum called part 103. FAA stands for Feds Against Aviation.
OK, we need a door prize. This is my most prized possession. This hat is insignafied "Ashtech GPS Survey Team". Ashtech is arguably the best GPS receiver. Everybody notice GPS, not Glonass? Anyway, the scrambled eggs on the visor is really Bob Hoover's signature, and he put it there. My most prized possession. I thought I might give it away here to someone from the FAA, if he could answer correctly a simple technical question - like the difference between voltage and current. If there is one here, come up at the end of the forum. A friend of mine pointed this out: an FAA wearing a hat from a GPS manufacturer they won't certify, on which is the personal signature of a pilot the FAA manipulated millions of dollars in contracts trying to ground, this is, for the FAA winner, kind of like having aids. And that he got it from screwing with Peshak.
Satellite systems status:
| GPS status | Glonass status |
| 24 satellite constellation | 24 satellite constellation |
| 27 satellites alive in orbit | 12 satellites alive in orbit |
| 22 satellites > 4 years old | 1 satellite > 4 years old |
| 11 unreliable & say so when | 4 unreliable & say so when |
| 16 unreliable & don't
say when folks this is a big problem - how do you know when a GPS satellite just starts lying to you? Tell you in a bit. |
0 this is against Russian policy |
| 4 solidly reliable satellites | 5 solidly reliable satellites |
Both GPS and Glonass are going down hill rapidly, because the cold war is over and there is no critical need to deliver atomic munitions.
GPS satellites, particularly, give unannounced wrong ranges, quite often.
Glonass does not do that. For GPS, real time notification of availability is critical. More about this as we go.
Glonass satellites seldom have problems (Russia turns those off).
Without new launches we be down to 5 satellites by the end of 1999
I always demand that my students look at the data and draw their own conclusions based upon their own criteria for their personal safety. The FAA maintains a web site where those edited graphs are located:
In general, we can say that single frequency Glonass at 59 feet is still much more accurate than single frequency GPS at 682 feet, but both are much worse than Glonass two frequency at 6 feet. Each can be made better by DSP processing more than just the code modulation, but they stay in the same order - aviation GPS is the worst choice. Currently I can get the two frequency Glonass to 4" and 0.045 mph seven sigma, at times, and that is the best choice. ICAO and FAA should fund more Glonass satellite launches to fill out the constellation. The availability of Glonass is currently reduced to ~50% of the day, GPS to 98%. Dual frequency GPS is still scrambled by AS jamming so we cannot use it. A dual frequency system is critical to aviation. WAAS is a total waste of money.
RAIM
I have it on FAA authority, actually Bob Wright, FAA Flight Standards, he said on August 1st in the FAA auditorium in the seminar at 2:30 that RAIM guarantees you a good signal! OK, Peshak, our RAIM algorithm showed good but you abandoned the approach, and we are gonna fine you $10,000 unless you tell us a real good reason why. Because I cleared the clouds and the 13R threshold at AUS was a McDonalds burger line with three people waiting! Folks, why do they always put the unknowledgable ones in Flight Standards?
GPS Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring tells you when there are definitely not enough GPS satellites to be navigating. For those of you without RAIM capability, so does an HDOP > 2.0. RAIM cannot tell you when one of the GPS satellites goes spooky, giving a wrong pseudorange and range rate. You can see this graphed at
The only reason there is any need for RAIM, with 27 satellites in orbit, is that NASA cannot hit an orbit slot! Fix NASA and the need for RAIM goes away! If you have a handheld, look at the HDOP and don't navigate for approaches at greater than 2.
So, how do we solve this predictive problem of knowing when a GPS satellite just went goofy and should not be used in a solution? Already done! It's called 12 hardware correlators, and an all in view solution. If George don't agree with the rest of the pack, then lock out George. Of course, the FAA certified approach GPS receivers don't have that capability! Only handhelds do! Rather than do a GPS receiver right, the FAA wants to sell us WAAS! Another big expensive unnecessary box for the cockpit.
How GPS satellite navigation works:
The ephemeris modulation tells what are the satellite orbital parameters. With a knowledge of the GPS week, and the time of week, the receiver calculates where the satellite is at any time. There will be a problem when the GPS week counter rolls over, because the receiver will calculate wrong satellite orbital positions! The speed of light is assumed to be a constant, and it isn't. At a sun spot minima, now, this assumption is CatI close enough. As we climb the sun spot activity curve, "assume" turns to "ass out of you and me". Lincoln Labs has documented a problem this year with an unexpected solar flare! The FAA fixed that problem by defunding the project to post the data, because it proved that WAAS/LAAS will not work to correct it! This problem will get worse in the coming 5 years.
The receiver knows the time "when the packet was received", and the "packet data" tells the time of telecast. The time difference multiplied by the speed of light establishes a "DME range" (hollow spherical surface) centered on the point in space where the receiver calculated the satellite should be when it telecast the "packet". You need four satellite range spheres to calculate a position. Two "soap bubbles" intersect in a planer circle, the third "soap bubble" cuts two points off the circle, the fourth "soap bubble" tells which of the two points is the real position. Four pseudoranges will correlate at only one possible 3D position. It is a good idea to have the satellites maximally apart in the sky so the spherical section intersections are maximally mutually orthogonal. That is why the FAA has IFR certified GPS units that only use three satellites in the solution, need connection to the altimeter, and use all together in the top of the sky or maximum signal strength as the algorithm! The word you are searching for to describe FAA certification is "incompetent".
Concerning sun spots, if even so much as one of those only four pseudoranges is even slightly wrong, then your position is dead wrong. I call this the "AUS 13R Threshold vs McDonalds Counter" syndrome. I don't really care whether the satellite just went bad, as only GPS satellites do, and as RAIM will not tell you; or it is due to ionization of the Kinnley Heavyside layer where all satellites are giving differently wrong pseudoranges. In the case of ionospheric slowing, however, all in the sky will not correct that out. So, says the FAA, only WAAS will correct that out! Male bovine solid excrement! We need a two frequency satellite, so the receiver can calculate that out. Right now, GPS two frequency is scrambled with AS. Glonass two frequency is available. If all else stays the same, ICAO should standardize on two frequency Glonass, because it is the most accurate and does not need augmentation to better augmented single frequency GPS positioning.
http://mx.iki.rssi.ru/SFCSIC/english.html
How does satellite navigation work?
So, with the sun spot cycle low at the moment, you don't need a two frequency solution today, and handhelds pretty much today all have 12 channels and the all in the sky solution algorithm. The best available technology is over at Wall Mart for about $100! Last time I checked, FAA will not certify this! Hot off AvWeb:
FAA Airworthiness Inspector is 8620-1 grounding aircraft for GPS yoke mount installations! Get the idea that the FAA is operating so as to decrease safety in aviation?!
Folks, I have invited here FAA certification engineers, the Administrator, Burt Rutan, who is our representative for General Aviation on the GPS council, and senior and chief engineers from some of the avionics companies that I have either consulted for, or want to.
The satellite derives all its signals from an onboard 10.23 MHz atomic frequency standard (Cesium, with Rubidium backup). The only GPS signal available to you is the L1 carrier at 1575.42 MHz (= 154 * 10.23). Each satellite transmits a narrow band spread-spectrum signal with a unique pseudo-random spreading code 1023 bits long, sent at a rate of 1.023 megabits/second. See how all those come out of the 10.23 MHz? Therefore each code bit represents a time mark every ~1 usec corresponding to a distance of approximately 300 meters, no ionization. The sequence repeats once per millisecond, corresponding to a distance of approximately 300 km, and is called the C/A (Coarse Acquisition) code. This is, with all in the sky, how we detect a suddenly crazy satellite within 1 millisecond, RAIM can not do that, and don't need WAAS to do that. WAAS has three goals, and one just got blown away with a better cheaper alternative.
Every 20th cycle (= 1/50th second) the C/A code may change phase. Whether (1) or not (0) it does is used to encode a 50 bits/sec data message, as well as serving as a approximately 6000 km range marker (approximately one earth radius). The 50 bps data, which consists of the sequence of phase reversal choices, is used to encode a 1500 bit long message which contains (among other things):
The current GPS date/time and the GPS-UTC correction
High accuracy ephemeris information to locate the satellite
Information on the current offset and rate errors for the atomic clock
Low-accuracy "almanac" data on health of all the other GPS satellites
A crude estimate, based on solar flux, of ionospheric delay correction
Folks, the FAA looked at the "Northern Light" phenomenon, which is caused by the solar eruption cycle 11 years in length. This is the problem for GPS, as you know it, because the speed of light depends on the conductivity of the medium. When the radio wave goes through ionization, it slows down. So you get a wrong position. The FAA looked at the "Northern Lights", and decided that it is homogeneous (like the inside of a neon bulb)! The FAA certified that the sky glows equally everywhere! The word you are looking for to describe the guy that wrote the FAA certification standard is "indoors"!
That one single glow index number is that solar flux number I just mentioned in the ephemeris. Right now, in the bottom of the solar flare cycle, this is a don't care. Wait about 5 years for the position errors of your life.
WAAS
The FAA, according to GAO, is about to spend 3 billion dollars of our fuel taxes on this boondoggle: The FAA, according to Global Positioning & Navigation News, is about to spend 14 billion dollars of our fuel taxes on this boondoggle: WAAS should stand for Worthless Aviation Anal Stupid:
We now rent two transponders, and maybe will launch a few, to broadcast messages to an extremely expensive another box in the avionics panel we will be forced to buy. There are three objectives:
First, the timely notify if a satellite goes crazy. Only GPS satellites are allowed to, Glonass get turned off if this happens. This is already solved better for free. It's called 12 channels and all in the sky, with a monitor on HDOP. WAAS objective #1 solved cheaper better already.
Second, the military adds an error to the position called SA. The WAAS is needed to broadcast to just every terrorist how to take that intentional position error back out. This is called the DoD-DoT food fight. One puts in error intentionally, and the other broadcasts to everybody how to take it back out. There is another solution - turn off SA. WAAS objective #2 solved cheaper better by common sense alternative.
Third, the sun spot phenomenon slows the speed of light through the ionosphere, effected by a solar flare and modulated by the earth's magnetic field. These regions flash and shimmer, just like the "Northern Lights". If a pseudorange to you from the satellite is coming through one of those, that makes for wrong range. That makes for, I spell, Papa Hotel Uniform Charlie Quebec Uniform Echo Delta.
Each satellite will have this range error problem to your position to a different extent (Northern Lights effect) in the coming years. This is trivially calculated out with a two frequency satellite like Glonass, or like the three frequency new GPS. That was the good news. The bad news is you ditch all of your present FAA certified receivers, because the sun spot problem cannot be tuned out with the one frequency GPS, which is FAA approach certified for your airplane, without the really more expensive than a new GPS receiver WAAS receiver plus an additional $3B to $14B.
Good news, we are, by government decision this summer, going to throw out all certified GPS receivers and all satellites. We will replace them with a totally new and different satellite navigation system with two or three frequencies, instead of the only one we have now. Better news, it is already there if we turned off AS on military GPS, or just used Glonass. Anyway, hoping that you will not notice this, the entirely new and different SatNav system will be called GPS! You'll certainly never notice the loss of that old FAA certified approach GPS cost, or you'll fly an approach with one of those and you won't be around to complain about the accuracy problem during the solar maxima!!
Present Glonass accuracy: I can get to 4" and 0.045 mph. New GPS accuracy will be about: 2 cm, which is under one inch, three frequency. The FAA should send you an AD instructing you that your IFR certified GPS is not to be used for navigation in an aircraft, or any life threatening application, as soon as this new system is up, if WAAS does not go through. But wait, WAAS doesn't work:
But I digress. The FAA is going to spend 3 to 14 billion dollars for WAAS satellites to fix the three problems that all went away. The word you are looking for is "ostrich", except their head is up "something else".
LAAS is still an acceptable alternative for the big airports. We need something until the new satellites are up, but we don't need it if AS is turned off, or we use Glonass!
Here is the WAAS deal: Your pseudorange goes through a "Northern Lights" cloud between you and the satellite, but the one used by the distant dGPS source does not. He doesn't see the need for the correction you badly need, and tells you not to use any! Your dGPS corrected position isn't, really, so your position is wrong; but no more wrong than totally without WAAS! WAAS didn't help you! Wrong position, and you die!!!
Here is the other deal: Your pseudorange does not go through a "Northern Lights" cloud, but the one used by the distant dGPS source does. He sees the need for much big correction you don't need, and tells you to use this big error addition! Your dGPS corrected position is really worse than without any! WAAS will kill you! Wrong position, and you die!!!
Everybody see why WAAS is a really bad idea? Everybody see why maybe Bruce Holms over at NASA, who has real engineers with college degrees, should take over the job of the FAA Technological Center? Who has Army gunnery sergeants with veterans preference?
Here is the military GPS and Glonass answer: Two different pseudoranges on the two different frequencies. They don't agree during shifting solar ionization cumulus clouds. Have the receiver correct the velocity factor until they agree! Done and right, you live to fly another day!!! Everybody see how we just completely shot up WAAS objectives? There is no reason for it! Everybody see how we just showed you how WAAS can kill you?
Anyway, your receiver makes a time "hack" on the code timing data for each of the GPS satellites in terms of its local crystal oscillator clock. In its carrier phase tracking loop it measures the apparent frequency of each GPS satellite. These are called the pseudorange (PR) and pseudorange rate (PRR). The PRs are typically measured to a few percent of the 1.023 Mbps (approximately 300 meter wavelength) C/A code. Everybody get at the 10 meter or better level? The PRRs are typically measured to a fraction of a Hertz (corresponding to the Doppler shift for a speed ~5 to 10 cm/sec = 0.1 to 0.2 miles/hr).
There is a NASA "can't hit an orbit slot" factor to the system: Because each satellite is to be and remain equidistant from the others in the same orbit, the Russians can do that and NASA cannot do that. Another reason Glonass is better than GPS, and makes for GPS needs a RAIM! The geometry is not perfect, because a GPS satellite is not where it is supposed to be. There is uncertainty in determination of position and speed which is worse than the individual measurements. Your receiver produces parameters called PDOP (Position Dilution of Precision), HDOP (H=horizontal) and VDOP (V=vertical) as a measure of how the orbit degraded geometry is spoiling your measurements. This is like the positional degradation in Loran, if you are not "in the V".
A PDOP=2 means that the position is a factor approximately x2 worse than the accuracy of the individual PRs. Fact of the matter is that if the HDOP is 2 or more, you shouldn't be navigating with this shit! GPS gets high HDOPs right now because NASA can't hit an orbit slot. Glonass gets high HDOPs right now because they have turned off too many satellites! FAA makes RAIM tell you that open sky is above you, and you shouldn't be navigating. That doesn't know if the satellites in view are bad because it doesn't look to see!!! Monitoring HDOP is a better solution. Got that Bob Wright, Flight Standards, Federal Aviation Administration???
How to build a GPS satellite receiver:
There are, (typically east northern US), between 6 and 11 GPS satellites in the sky. It varies that much because NASA forgot how to hit an orbit slot. It changes slightly over time because the satellites move in the sky. It takes about 12 hours for any given satellite to orbit the planet, each traveling at a different speed. By using an 11 channel GPS receiver you can always get all available satellites.
Some handhelds use a six channel GPS receiver, and that is "overloaded" approximately 98% of the time! That means that it can't track all of the available satellites, so its availability or reliability is deficient 98% of the time!!! Some use an eight channel GPS receiver, and that is "overloaded" ~48% of the time! What this means is, with a 11+ channel GPS receiver you will not lose accurate position when you bank, or when the satellite gets near the horizon, or when a GPS satellite goes crazy and lies. And this is why the FAA has IFR certified 3 channel GPS receivers!!! The expression you are looking for is "dumber than a fence post"!
Remember, you also need an "all in the sky" solution algorithm to use those redundant channels. The FAA has certified a "just best four"!!! Folks, can we get rid of these idiots before they kill too many of us???
OK, here is the algorithm. With 5 channels used, you get a position parity detect. You can know if the position is right or wrong, but you can't force it right. With 6, you get the opportunity for one error correction - you know which satellite just "popped off into schizophrenia" and can ignore it. Remember, that happens a lot with GPS, and I gave you the web site to go look for yourself. With 7, you can withstand up to two error corrections... You get the idea. Bad satellite ranges can be eliminated within one cycle with "all in the sky", don't need WAAS, shouldn't use WAAS if you had it, RAIM can not do that. The FAA certified stuff cannot do error correction!!! The phrase you are looking for is "blunderous moronic idiotic stupid incapable of learning...".
Don't buy GPS avionics:
with vacuum tubes in it
with less than 11 channel correlators in the receiver
without "all in the sky" solution algorithm software
without an NMEA 0183 v2.0+ output sentence talker
without an SC-104 input sentence reader for coast guard dGPS
In short, the last time I looked, no FAA certified alternative.
The political action you desire is take certification away from FAA and turn over to Bruce Holms at NASA, take the billions from the FAA and give it to the FRA, who is paying for the new three frequency GPS satellites, and kill both SA and AS by turning it off, or fund ICAO who is going Glonass for a world standard for civil air navigation. The politics is that Russia believes in giving the world accuracy, and DoD believes in AS. Might be nice to try to do something about former Army lifer cannon aimer personnel with veterans preference going to work as FAA certification or regulation authority!!!
FAA jamming of GPS
The United States government is installing GPS jammer transmitters on all VORs. One source of jamming was inadvertently used, recently, which blanked out GPS coverage over upstate New York! Folks, the phrase you are looking for is "sole use navigation". There are areas of the US where GPS jamming is carried out regularly, to 250 mile range! The phrase you are looking for is "mass terrorism". The agency of our military in charge calls it "NavWar".
The FAA believes that it is a good idea to go along with the idea that an aircraft might be used as a weapon, so it is installing and testing GPS jammers!!! Folks, they don't come no dumber than this. AS to prevent the good stuff, SA to add error to the bad stuff, WAAS to take the error out, VOR locations of jammer transmitters to zap all civil aircraft navigation. If you remember connelrad from the 1950s, you know 640 and 1240 on your AM radio dial - that is what this is. Some 2nd lieutenant pushes a red button, and aviation sole use navigation stops working over the entire continental U.S..
There was a listing of each FAA GPS jammer site put up on the internet as it came on line and ready to use. I published an article and put that URL in there.
http://www.teleport.com/~wjbarton/gaviation/index.htm
NavWar has changed its name, to try to hide better what it does, which is to make sure that all aircraft can be denied GPS navigation in a sole use environment. This is the heart for the present GPS jamming system deployed in the U.S. by the FAA. New news: they want to move on to make GPS receivers and equipment easier to remotely disable. This changes jamming to spoofing, and, of course, requires the complicity of the equipment manufacturers, which is being forced!!! All of a sudden, GPS avionics manufacturers need engineers like me with top secret security clearance!!! The entity in charge is the airforce! The guy in charge is Dick Flippo, and he can be reached at 2435 Vela Way, Suite 1613, El Segundo, CA 90245-5500, telephone (310) 363-3844. General postings at:
http://www.laafb.af.mil/SMC/CZ/homepage
With special NavWar developments at:
http://gps.laafb.af.mil/user/advue/cbdnw1.htm
Loran
Flash - NASA turned on GPS receiver to land the space shuttle. Flash - PIC turned it off, and turned on the Loran-C for better approach guidance! How's that for sole use GPS navigation, Bubba?
The government has authorized continuation of Loran until 2008. One reason for this is that Loran is more accurate than GPS, if you are not on an extended baseline. Anyway, the bill is on DoT secretary's desk. FAA has admitted that we can't trust GPS as a sole use navigation system, period!!! Even here at Oshkosh - FAA Bob Wright said that.
Loran repeatability, if you are not on an extended baseline, is about 25 feet, which beats GPS accuracy by two orders of magnitude! A Madison, Wisconsin company is building an "all on the ground" Loran C receiver, which means that position dependent accuracy concerns of the Loran technology go away! Like GPS, it will be able to be operated by someone who is busy flying for his life, because the receiver will be intelligent enough to handle baseline issues, and GRI switching, by itself. Locus, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin.
Coast Guard upgrading Loran-C with the installation of Automatic Blink (allows little red flag on the "ILS head"). Absence of this feature is what, essentially, killed Loran-C approaches - this is now possible. The other issue was worry over the pilot having to set a seasonal additional secondary factor (tune in two seasonal correction numbers on a receiver got from ATIS). Flash - use of a thing called a "NavCom", by pilots, has proven that pilots can successfully set little numbers in a box while flying! Flash, the FAA still doesn't buy off on that!!!
Remember how well Bob Wright did the GPS presentation? Different fool, same story.
Folks, line up and support Langhorn Bond, former FAA Administrator on this one. I know, sounds like a parity error, doesn't it?
http://www.teleport.com/~wjbarton/gaviation/index.htm
Loran C Needs your help (And do you ever need the help)
Impending GPS disaster
The GPS week counter will rollover (all 10 bits @ 1 change to all 10 bits @ 0). What this means is your GPS receiver calculates that as 6 January 1980, and this will happen on 22 August 1999. What that means is your receiver thinks all satellites are in the wrong place! Bad news, you could die if you are dumb enough to do approach GPS navigation on your FAA IFR certified GPS unit! Good news: some GPS receivers can be "fixed" with new software. Bad news: some cannot. FAA news: "What's a week counter thing-a-ma-bob doohickey, anyway?"
Glonass Receivers:
Ashtech GG-24 is Glonass 12 channel single frequency non-precision modulation + GPS 12 channel single frequency non-precision modulation. Company bought by Magellan. They followed my advice (to make it always favor Glonass over GPS (which now leads to some healthy accuracy errors when not enough Glonass satellites in orbit)). OK, I was wrong, algorithm should have been favor Glonass when HDOP<2, else add a GPS satellite ("starving Ivan" algorithm modification). It got a lot worse, but is still better than GPS. Last known cost was approximately $10,000, but you don't want that one anymore.
New development, the Z18 receiver is single frequency GPS + dual frequency Glonass, up to 18 total satellites. Solves the sun spot problem that no GPS receiver can, until we give the WAAS money to the railroad and get up the 3 frequency GPS satellites. My guess six GPS L1 SA, plus six L1 Glonass, plus the same six L2 Glonass (if you will let me get away with that terminology). This means 20 foot accuracy with no LAAS or WAAS or dGPS, and relegate the GPS signals to use only for emergency backup, not for navigation, and available right now.
New player Spectra Precision Surveying, Inc becomes #2 to offer dual frequency Glonass. Probably 12 of L1 and the same 12 of L2, 24 channel box. And their ad in the July/August issue of Professional Surveyor seems to indicate that they are really close to breaking the GPS Y code, what is called AS. This means that dual frequency GPS receivers by using the secret military channels are just a short time away! That development would make present military GPS the best accuracy, but we need to fully bust the code jamming called anti-spoofing. That would mean anybody using FAA GPS and LAAS or WAAS is just plain stupid, and needs to die during an approach to clean up the gene pool.
http://www.spectraprecision.com
Any way you look at it, Glonass still beats GPS, but both systems are getting thread bare. Glonass desperately needs more satellite launches. GPS desperately needs some policy decisions for triple frequency capability, and new launches, and some one person in charge. DUSD space got fired, and his command fractured. The GPS ship of state has a WAAS nuclear torpedo stuck in its side, ready to blow, and no captain on the bridge, and the four new captains are in CIC arguing about which of four directions to steer! GPS could be history, even with a full load of birds now in orbit. With all this fuss over dither the GPS signal with SA and de-dither with another system - dGPS, WAAS, LAAS, CORS, GWEN; and AS when the code has been broken, means FAA wants you to have at least two really expensive aircraft receivers and get poorer performance than a different off the shelf cheap single receiver! Not only is the system made way too expensive for aircraft use, but the risk of failure is much higher than for Glonass or the new GPS, neither of which require FAA WAAS, which can kill you if you ever get to use it. Because GPS can't be used away from the error correction site anyway. So WAAS is 3 to 14 billion down the toilet. With that kind of money, the FAA could give everybody a new full IFR panel, fix all the old VORs and DMEs and ILSs and NDBs, and fix the social security system with the left over.
Slide Last: Opinion:
The FAA:
The FAA still wants to shut down ILSs and VORs and DMEs and NDBs, anyway.
According to IBM, and confirmed by network television news, all ATC "center computers" will fail at midnight December 31st, 1999 (radar quits working because of Y2K). The FAA is trying to divest the entire "air traffic control" responsibility (performance based).
So far in one year Airforce One, the President's personal plane, almost got mailed by UPS (opposite direction 747). FAA lost it on radar. FAA says President was never in any danger. Both pilots said about 38 feet clearance. Also lost Airforce One twice more. They started keeping track of Airforce Two, the vice President's plane. FAA lost it twice so far this year. FAA admitted it is the physics of radar, which means TCAS jams radar and now they know that! And the FAA knows about the radar screen going to monochromatic monointensity on December 31, 1999! Suggest get all government officials airborne at midnight 31 December 1999, and close down the entire FAA for good the next day!!!
The FAA has full confidence in coast mode. That is where, because there is too much traffic on 1030 and 1090 MHz, what with all of the TCAS systems the FAA wants everybody to wear, the radar can't see where the airplanes are! Coast mode is, you guessed it, just keep coasting the target as if radar sees it. The newest radars put a "C" in the data block AFTER they have been in cost mode for a long time.
Good news, the FAA wants you to have radar information data linked into your cockpit. Bad news, the radar data is wrong!!! Coast mode destroys the accuracy in more than just the L.A. Basin, and Northeast Triangle. This is nothing more than a video game!!! It needs to be fixed, or there is no collision avoidance.
Back to Keith's home page. Last updated on 03/15/99