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Old September 26th 04, 07:37 PM
Netgeek
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"GeorgeB" wrote in message
...
Aviation radio is AM ... fwiw


Interesting that this is still the case. In fact, the majority of the "old
school" stuff is fairly low tech when you get right down to it. If you take
a look at what is required to interpret ILS signals - fairly simple. Same
with marker beacons, etc. (and alot of it AM still). What I'm interested in
is how to take some of the newer proposals and concepts and make them
simpler/cheaper so that virtually anyone can actually use them (starting
with myself of course 8-)...

As an example - I found an article that mentioned a "SAAS" system proposal
(as part of NASA's SATS program). Basically this is a GPS augmentation
system intended for small airports (Small Airport Augmentation System). We
already have WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation) and I don't know what happened to
LAAS (Local Area Augmentation) - but SAAS was intended to deliver a low-cost
system that could provide a "virtual ILS" at any small airport. The accuracy
was on the order of around 0.2 meters horizontal and 0.3 meters vertical -
allowing approaches to the smallest of airports (or grass strips, I
suppose?) to Category I (1800 ft. runway visual and 200 ft. ceilings)
minimums without mega-bucks worth of additional equipment....Wow!!! - not
far removed from the next step of an autoland system in light aircraft.

Assuming that you already have a decent on-board, panel-mounted processor
and display - you can start with something like the Mountainscope software
for enroute stuff - www.pcavionics.com , then you could add on some
TCAS-like functionality (using an ADS-B receiver) and then some precision
approach capability (using SAAS or equivalent) - and all of this for only a
few thousand bucks...

I'm planning to start some development on the various blocks so that I have
something to play with: Air Data, AHRS, ADS-B and see where it leads (maybe
nowhere, but what the hell?)...

Thanks for the pointers so far.