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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0514.PDF
20 February 1959 251 programme aimed principally at early application of existingscientific technology. Phase 3, which is more futuristic, involves the establishment of a permanent programme of continuingmodernization of the nation's aviation facilities. The effective result of this directive has been a huge five-yearplan to run from January 1, 1958, to the same date in 1963 during which a tremendous research and installation programme is tobe directed towards establishing "what will hereinafter be referred to as the 'System.'" And this is a system on the grand scale!During the relatively short 14-month existence of A.M.B. no less than 306 projects and tasks have already been established andcontracts worth $21,000,000 have been placed. Congress appro- priated $31.5 million for the current financial year and a similarsum can be expected for "fiscal 1960." Government agencies, private and commercial research organ-izations and a great number of companies have been brought into the programme to "develop, modify, test and evaluate systems,procedures, facilities and devices, as well as define the performance characteristics thereof; to meet the needs of safe and efficientnavigation and traffic control of all civil and military aviation except for those needs of military agencies which are peculiar toair warfare and primarily of military concern; and select such systems, procedures, facilities and devices as will best serve suchneeds and will promote maximum co-ordination of air traffic control and air defense systems." It should be remembered thatmilitary aircraft flying airways account for a significant portion of the airways traffic and that large groups of aircraft or singleintercepters are at any time liable to cut diagonally across crowded airway systems at short notice. The rough edge of the common system concept has already beenfelt by the introduction of Vortac as a joint standard, but the extent to which civil/military standardization is to be implementedis considerably wider than might at first appear. When the data processing central goes into service, all the flight-plan informationit derives will be fed into Sage centres to assist Air Defense Command in identifying aircraft. In a number of cases, militarysurveillance radar information is passed to civil traffic control centres by micro-wave link, or civil operators work alongsidemilitary personnel. There is also a considerable number of joint- user airfields at which, tower and approach-control facilities arejointly operated. Airways flying by military aircraft is in fact very common and this requirement is reflected both in the equip-ment the average military aircraft carries and in the type of instrument-flight training the pilots receive. Within Air DefenseCommand, the Air Defense Systems Integration Division is responsible for planning with the Bureau of Research andDevelopment the adjustment of military and civil area boundaries with the object of setting up Air Route Traffic Control Centresand Air Defense Centres in close proximity. Eleven ARTCCs are to be moved during this financial year and a further 14next year. The Bureau of Research and Development has four directoratesrespectively responsible for operational analysis, systems analysis, systems experimentation and development, their tasks being dis-tributed within the three phases laid down by the Curtis report. The directorate of development is primarily intended to coverthose long-term projects which will eventually be incorporated in the system and includes such studies as collision avoidancesystems, the use of various types of direction finding, height find- ing, 2-D, 3-D and coloured radar presentations and a large numberof other projects. Basic research is involved, whereas the other directorates are working on programmes which must form partof a complete semi-automatic traffic-control system to be installed in the New York area by 1963. All work is divided under theheadings of systems research, data acquisition, navigation, com- munications, data processing display, airports and weather. Thebroad description of the work involved fills well over 100 pages of the latest Program and Progress Report issued last Novemberby the Federal Aviation Agency. The first year has been devoted to producing an "experimentalmodel of a significant segment of the improved system." Between January 1959 and July 1960 practical testing and modification willbe carried out, mostly at the new experimental centre. Live trials are to begin in January 1960 and elements of the new system areto be progressively phased in to the actual operational organiza- tion by July 1961. Between January 1961 and January 1963 thecomplete system should be set up in actual operation and produc- tion equipment should become available. Operational analysis includes a complete survey of traffic andthe ways in which it has been delayed in all the main airways areas. The characteristics of transport aircraft, human factors,training requirements, staffing levels, weather facilities and factors and a host of other topics are also covered. Systems analysisinvolves the same kind of investigation of more specific projects, development of methods of simulation and investigation ofmethods of integrating military and civil requirements. One of the more controversial steps has been the establishmentof the new National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center at the former Pomona Naval Air Station at Atlantic City, N.J., rightin the heart of a high-density traffic area. The C.A.A. Technical Development Center at Indianapolis is to be closed down.Atlantic City was, however, deliberately chosen because it was a good area for experiments with heavy traffic and because it wasclose to the first Sage centre set up at Kingston, N.Y. A fighter squadron of the New Jersey Air National Guard has also movedinto Atlantic City and a complete set of equipment for all-weather operations and servicing and modification of aircraft is being pro-vided to support laboratory work. As part of the collision- avoidance effort, a Beech C-18, a Skymaster, a Packet and a C-131Samaritan have been treated with different types of fluorescent paint. An F9F-8T Cougar, a Tri-Pacer and an Aero Commanderare also available, and the Constellation is being fitted out as an airborne laboratory for equipment testing. Despite the fact that Vortac is established de jure as the jointcivil/military navigation aid, investigation of other systems such as Loran C and the French Radio Web have been called for, whileDecca Navigator is being evaluated under a separate programme as a purely helicopter aid in the New York area by New YorkAirways. Their Vertol 44Bs have been fitted with receivers and a Bell H-13H carries Decca and other special gear. The resultof six months' operation will be analysed by another company. The Program and Progress Report gives the impression that Vortacis not by any means considered as the final navigation aid, or even as the only element of the immediate system. The keystone of the whole new System is the Data Processingand Display Central, for the design of which General Precision Laboratories Inc. received contracts worth $8.2 million lastFebruary and June. One is for the en route portion of a system A section of the Air Route Traffic Control Center at Indian- apolis, with flight- progress racks, in- formation boards and a Raytheon Flight Tracker radar con- sole in the centre
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