Sectional use

Jay Honeck writes:

I think you're forgetting that it takes forever for all the old stuff
to go away -- at least not in America.

I thought I read that the FAA was itching to decommission NDBs and
(perhaps?) VORs.

Even though I rarely turn them
on, I've got dual VORs in the panel, with dual glide-slope indicators,
and (until last month) I still had DME, too. (I yanked it out, and
gained 10 pounds of useful load...)

You still need the transmitters on the ground, though.

However, even with IFR the situational awareness and accuracy of GPS
is so markedly improved that I really don't know any "hard" IFR pilots
who *don't* rely on GPS anymore. Every one of the pilots I know who
routinely fly IFR relies heavily on GPS technology now -- and that's
only proper.

Do they still tune their VORs and cross-check to ensure that the
heading towards the real VOR matches the heading given by the GPS?

Yep. Heck, they've already removed the NDB approaches from most of
the airports in our area. VORs will hang in there a few more
decades, but they will soon go the way of the light beacons.

And then the bad guys will head to the area of a major airport, turn
on the GPS jammer, and kill a few thousand people in an hour without
anyone even knowing they were there.

--
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And then the bad guys will head to the area of a major airport, turn
on the GPS jammer, and kill a few thousand people in an hour without
anyone even knowing they were there.

That's an interesting (if appalling) topic. I wonder why no one (to
my knowledge) has ever taken out an ILS transmitter -- or, worse,
jammed it to cause false readings -- in an effort to do the same
thing?

If you think about what this would do at, for example, Chicago's
O'Hare International, with planes landing at better than one per
minute, the results could be truly appalling.

You could literally (in theory) steer a dozen jumbo jets into the
ground during a snow storm before anyone caught on... Yet, it's not
been done.

Have Osama's buddies just not thought of this yet, or are we talking
about something that is much harder to accomplish than we might
assume?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 28 Jan 2007 05:45:44 -0800, Jay Honeck wrote:

Have Osama's buddies just not thought of this yet, or are we talking
about something that is much harder to accomplish than we might
assume?

GPS jamming is only done by those operating the GPS satellites. But only
for military purpose and not for the described purpose. Don't know how the
receiver will react when one signal (out of how many?) is out of scope.

And: What alert level you think would bring another terrorist act? They
already won. Shock and awe, you know.

#m
--
I am not a terrorist. http://www.casualdisobedience.com/

Martin Hotze writes:

GPS jamming is only done by those operating the GPS satellites.

Anyone with the right equipment can jam the signal, and it can be done
from the ground.

Don't know how the
receiver will react when one signal (out of how many?) is out of scope.

All the signals can be spoofed within a specific area by the right
equipment.

And: What alert level you think would bring another terrorist act? They
already won. Shock and awe, you know.

They won as soon as they generated the hysteria and loss of civil
liberties that they had targeted. They had the government to help
them, which has the same objectives but for different reasons (the
government likes to increase power whenever possible).

Terrorism requires acts that are spectacular, since terrorists don't
have the means to do things that are actually highly damaging in an
objective sense. So exploding things is much more popular than, say,
embezzlement. But multiple plane crashes might have enough of a
Hollywood flavor to appeal to terrorists.

--
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On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:41:41 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

GPS jamming is only done by those operating the GPS satellites.

Anyone with the right equipment can jam the signal, and it can be done
from the ground.

yes. I meant: right now it is only done by those operating the satellites.

Don't know how the
receiver will react when one signal (out of how many?) is out of scope.

All the signals can be spoofed within a specific area by the right
equipment.

I can't argue on that due to lack of knowledge on this topic. ah, well,
thanks to wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_...em#GPS_jamming
and:
---snip
According to John Ruley, of AVweb, "IFR pilots should have a fallback plan
in case of a GPS malfunction".
---snap

as for the terrorists: no idea how much effort, skill, money and time you
need. And how big the jammers are. *gooogle* oh, here is a GPS jammer
cookbook: http://www.phrack.org/archives/60/p60-0x0d.txt *g*

Terrorism requires acts that are spectacular, since terrorists don't
have the means to do things that are actually highly damaging in an
objective sense. So exploding things is much more popular than, say,
embezzlement. But multiple plane crashes might have enough of a
Hollywood flavor to appeal to terrorists.

So pouring 1 gallon of $pickyourfavouritepoison into the water basin of a
small town would do the trick. It will show that rural areas can be hit
("nobody is safe!") too and you have Hollywood-like szenes (hey, they
already have done films on such topics). This is much cheaper, low tech and
takes so much less effort than jamming GPS signals.

disclaimer: I am NOT a terrorist.

#m
--
I am not a terrorist. http://www.casualdisobedience.com/

Martin Hotze writes:

yes. I meant: right now it is only done by those operating the satellites.

Actually, some other parties have developed jamming capabilities.
Mostly governments, IIRC, but it's pretty much inevitable that it has
already fallen into private hands.

So pouring 1 gallon of $pickyourfavouritepoison into the water basin of a
small town would do the trick.

There isn't any poison toxic enough to work with only one gallon, if
the water supply is of any significant size (it would work for a well,
though).

But overall the idea is to do something spectacular and highly
visible, even though it may not do much objective damage. 9/11 is a
typical example of this: the actual objective impact of the attack was
vastly smaller than the psychological impact.

Terrorists do this because they simply don't have the means to win
with real firepower. If they have real military capability, they just
attack in the classic way instead, with aircraft and tanks and so on.
Indeed, sometimes the only difference between the two groups is that
one has the means to maintain and use a standing military, and the
other doesn't.

This is much cheaper, low tech and
takes so much less effort than jamming GPS signals.

Maybe. It doesn't take much to make people hysterical, especially in
areas where the mass media fan the flames. It's interesting that
terrorists, the government, and the media all have somewhat different
goals, but the very same acts serve their purposes. A terrorist
attack is a win for the terrorists, a win for the government (it can
keep a president in office, for example), and a win for the media
(fodder for creating Fear, Uncertainty, and Dread, the essential
prerequisites to revenue).

Anyway, it's not a good idea to rely too much on GPS, or on any other
one navigation method.

I just finished flying from the Grand Canyon to Phoenix by VORs with a
chart, just to stay in practice. I kept the GPS turned off. It works
just fine, and I'm not sure that it's that much more tedious than
using a GPS.

--
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Mxsmanic,

Anyway, it's not a good idea to rely too much on GPS, or on any other
one navigation method.

And you would know to make a judgement like that how?

I just finished flying from the Grand Canyon to Phoenix by VORs

No, you didn't.


--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

In article .com,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

And then the bad guys will head to the area of a major airport, turn
on the GPS jammer, and kill a few thousand people in an hour without
anyone even knowing they were there.

snort


That's an interesting (if appalling) topic. I wonder why no one (to
my knowledge) has ever taken out an ILS transmitter -- or, worse,
jammed it to cause false readings -- in an effort to do the same
thing?

If you think about what this would do at, for example, Chicago's
O'Hare International, with planes landing at better than one per
minute, the results could be truly appalling.

You could literally (in theory) steer a dozen jumbo jets into the
ground during a snow storm before anyone caught on... Yet, it's not
been done.

Unlikely. There are field monitors and most jumbos would have radar
altimeters (or radio altimeters or whatever the heck they are called).

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

Bob Noel writes:

Unlikely. There are field monitors and most jumbos would have radar
altimeters (or radio altimeters or whatever the heck they are called).

Famous last words. The USA had gate security before 9/11, and that
was supposed to stop the bad guys.

--
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Jay Honeck writes:

That's an interesting (if appalling) topic.

I think it is a real risk, but it would depend on the personality of
the bad guys. Unfortunately, it's quite feasible technically. The
U.S. military already has effective "area denial" (local jamming)
technology for GPS, and by now someone has certainly stolen it.

I wonder why no one (to
my knowledge) has ever taken out an ILS transmitter -- or, worse,
jammed it to cause false readings -- in an effort to do the same
thing?

The bad guys probably just aren't that sophisticated, and perhaps they
lack imagination, just as the good guys do.

A single ILS wouldn't be as damaging as jamming or spoofing GPS over a
populated area. And since civilian GPS is not encrypted, it is
particularly vulnerable to this. You just replace the satellite and
WAAS signals and direct an aircraft anywhere you want.

This is vastly harder to do with VORs, because there are so many of
them, the signal is simpler and stronger, and so on.

If you think about what this would do at, for example, Chicago's
O'Hare International, with planes landing at better than one per
minute, the results could be truly appalling.

Exactly. That's one reason why I wouldn't trust GPS entirely, even
when it seems to be working perfectly.

You could literally (in theory) steer a dozen jumbo jets into the
ground during a snow storm before anyone caught on... Yet, it's not
been done.

Yup.

Have Osama's buddies just not thought of this yet, or are we talking
about something that is much harder to accomplish than we might
assume?

I don't think they've thought of it. Hopefully they don't read this
newsgroup. And hopefully someone in the government has thought of it,
and is working on it, instead of all the dog-and-pony shows of useless
security that wastes so much time and effort and eats so deeply into
civil liberties now.

--
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