You know what absolutely blows me away, and I can't wait until it becomes
the new standard?
With WAAS technology, you can fly a GPS approach into an airport that has NO
localizer, NO glideslope, etc.
The GPS will guide you in within 1 meter horizontally and vertically.
I'm only VFR, so some of my terminology may be off, but you get the idea.
How cool is that?

Seems to me that airports could save money because they wouldn't need to
maintain any radio navigation equipment anymore...

Adam
N7966L
Beech Super III



I'm just a private pilot too but dont forget the other parts of the
"instrument approach" structure. The electronic glidepath is only part
of it.

You have to have good lighting as well... if you plan on doing GPS
approaches down to the equivalent of a Cat 1 ILS you will still need to
have the lighting systems and runway markings that allow you to
transition to a visual environment at say 200 feet off the deck when you
break out of the soup. That means you still will need over 1200 linear
feet worth of land that can support it. Don't expect 200 ft minimums to
a 40 x 3000 strip of asphalt with 50 ft obstacles 100 ft from the end
across the fence.

WAAS is good stuff.. and it will open a lot of airports up, not to
mention allow glideslopes to EVERY runway that can support it (without
regard to ILS frequency congestion). But it wont be a hard IFR solution
to every field.

Dave