On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:31:53 -0400, "Blueskies"
wrote in
:


"Larry Dighera" wrote in message ...
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 04:30:58 -0700, Denny wrote
in . com:

As far as me personally, ATC could vanish and it would affect me very
little - and that 'little' could be worked around... I file IFR less
and less... When I do not file IFR I do not need ATC...
I can, do, and have, flown from one border of this country to the
other without talking to ATC...

Out here in the Los Angeles basin, the air traffic is so thick, that I
wouldn't consider not using Radar Advisory Service on VFR flights. But
if I had to pay for it, I might reconsider that decision.

Privatized, user fee based, ATC must necessarily negatively impact air
safety, because it provides a disincentive (dollar price) against the
use of aviation services meant to enhance safety.


If, with a simple box upgrade, you could be sure that you knew where all the traffic was, would you still want the radar
advisories?

think ADS/B


Of course, ADS/B will only "see" transponder equipped aircraft, so it
is not able to provide positional information on ALL aircraft traffic.
Have you any idea of the cost to equip a typical GA aircraft with
ADS/B? Do you agree, that the expense may delay such installations
infinitely?

Doesn't it make more sense to have a few ground-based radar
installations for traffic separation rather than the hundreds of
thousands of ADS/B installations for it to work?

Unless ALL aircraft (including the military) are equipped with ADS/B,
there will be potentially conflicting air traffic that will not be
flagged, won't there?

What is a reasonable period of time to expect ALL aircraft to be ADS/B
equipped?

What is a reasonable period of time to expect FAA Traffic
Information Service–Broadcast (TIS–B) installations to provide
coverage of the entire NAS?

Is ADS/B infallible; is it able to provide absolute confirmation of
the location of conflicting traffic, or does it rely upon the validity
of the information provided by all ADS/B equipped flights?

In the case of low-level flights in sparsely populated areas (such as
military aircraft on MTR routs), how well will ADS/B function for air
traffic deconfliction given its line-of-sight communications
limitations and the military's workaround approach to ADS/B equipping
for military aircraft?*

What sort of backup system will be available for deconflicting air
traffic in the event of a GPS outage as may occur at the next, and
succeeding, periodic eleven-year solar maxima** due to possible CME
events?

As you can see, I am thinking about, not only ADS/B, but
satellite-based NextGen ATC too, and I'm wondering what sort of backup
plan the FAA has to separate aircraft when GPS and radio
communications become unreliable?



*
http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_paper...relli_adsb.pdf



**
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_maximum
Historic maximums
The last solar maximum was in 2001, and on March 10, 2006 NASA
researchers announced that the next cycle would be the strongest
since the historic maximum in 1958 in which northern lights could
be seen as far south as Mexico. [1] This projection was based on
research done by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR).





http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...htm?list862664
Solar Storm Warning

03.10.2006

+ Play Audio | + Download Audio | + Historia en Español | + Email
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March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots
have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is
utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a storm.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most
intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a
team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50%
stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years
ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the
historic Solar Max of 1958.

That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning:
Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US
satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar
storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell
phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was
happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico.
A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell
phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern
technologies.