Amendment 9 to the Technical Specification for IGC Flight Recorders

Amendment 9 to the Technical Specification for IGC-Approved GNSS Flight
Recorders takes effect on 1 July 2006. It will appear on the IGC GNSS
web pages shortly, together with a complete updated Specification
document.

Before finalisation, this amendment has been circulated in a number of
drafts to the IGC GFA and ANDS Committees, and to manufacturers and
potential manufacturers of IGC-approved GNSS Flight Recorders.

Although the Specification document is mainly aimed at recorder
manufacturers and those involved in making analysis programs, it is
available for anyone to download from the IGC web pages.

Comments from anyone, initially to the Chairman of the IGC GFA
Committee, are always welcome.

Subjects covered by Amendment 9 include:

1. Introduction of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) as an addition to
existing systems such as RSA and DSA, for protecting the integrity of
flight data in IGC files.

2. Disclaimers, prepared in consultation with FAI legal experts,
referring to modules and sub-systems that may be used as part of an
IGC-approved recorder system, but are extra to the basic recording and
security functions. The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of such
systems are also covered.

3. What IGC requires in Public and Private Key data used in the
protection of flight data in the IGC file is more closely defined.

4. Time recorded in GNSS fixes in IGC files is more closely defined as
UTC obtained from the same GNSS data package from which the recorded
lat/long and GPS altitude are also obtained, or, if GPS is not locked
on, from the Real-Time Clock in the recorder.

5. The header record of IGC files that gives the manufacturer and type
of recorder, to include more detailed data including sub-types of
recorder.

6. The E-record in the IGC file is used to record specific events on
the IGC file that occur at irregular intervals. Such events must not
use the fix record that occurs regularly and frequently during the IGC
file, because this would fill out the fix record with extra data that
may not change for considerable periods.

7. Appendix 3 - The free IGC DLL files that provide download and data
validation functions to work with the MS Windows XP operating system
but not necessarily with earlier types of MS Windows systems.

8. Other minor changes of wording are also included.

Ian Strachan
Chairman, IGC GNSS Flight Recorder Approval Committee (GFAC)