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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 1189.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT. fUGHT International. 2 January 1969 Dangerous Desert i1 I map of the world will show the Sahara as being among the most densely populated areas, but, so far as air traffic is concerned, it already has a high population—so much so that the pilot's worry nowadays is not getting lost over the uninhabited wastes but hitting someone else in the very much inhabited airspace. As in every part of the world, even in the New York area, there is ample air for everybody provided that three conditions are met—namely that everybody knows where he himself is. that the controller also knows and that the two can talk freely to each other. Of these perhaps the latter is the more impor tant since, even if the knowledge of position is inadequate both in the air and on the ground, some escape is usually possible by allowing a safety margin by way of separate altitude assignments or pushing off into the less populated parts of the FIR. The trouble over the Sahara is that none of these three conditions of safety is met. In respect of airborne navigation, assistance from navigational aids is too unreliable for accurate tracks to be flown; and in respect of navigational monitoring from the ground, radar surveillance is non-existent. But of greater significance is the fact that both air/ground and point- to-point communications are so poor in parts of the Niamey. Kano, Fort Lamy, Tunis, Malta and Algiers FIRsthat aircraft are daily finding that, as they leave the area of one control authority, they are not known in the next until they them selves can initiate the first message exchange—which can be anything up to an hour after entry. Their message will often be ahead of the ground/ground exchange and hence traffic co-ordination is not even started until there exists a conflict situation. As an example, the president of IFALPA. no- less, pro ceeding over the Sahara recently from Madrid to Lagos via Tamanrarat, was out of touch with Algiers (or anywhere) for 45min after losing VHF contact; and when communication was established, there was same-level, opposite-direction traffic over the same reporting point within two minutes. Two minutes sounds, of course, quite a lot of airspace, but even on airways with full navigational aids, the standard minimum separation (based on 20 years of ATC experience) is ten minutes. Taking into account lack of such aids over the Sahara, it is clearly only a matter of time before there is a case of same-level traffic over the same reporting point but without that two minutes. A temporary alleviation of the situation would be the reorientation of the north-south axis of the semi-circular separation, which should reduce the amount of same-fevel traffic near axis, but the real answer can lie only in the direction of a traditional airways structure. Unfortunately, for that we must have the essential ground infrastructure and one cannot easily lay down in the Sahara a separate set of north bound and southbound airways served by strings of VORs and VHF* stations. A VHF station requires continuous manning and even an automatic VOR tends to turn intro spective and to waste away out there if it is not given a modest amount of care and affection. Further, looking at the HF position from the point of view of communication, the vast expanse of sand dunes with extremely dry subsoil produces unpredictable propagation conditions which even the most modern equipment cannot altogether overcome. A long-range navaid is clearly needed but the selection of such an aid still has to be settled at inter national level. One therefore looks for an earlier solution and here, luckily, we have satellite communication just round the corner. This surely should permit a strong VHF signal to be used even over the largest desert areas; and it also should allow the costs to be spread among the users and not among the local Tuareg. A worldwide satellite communications system would certainly seem to be the fairest, and eventually the cheapest major contribution to air traffic control over remote areas and the high seas. 1 understand that there are still a few problems to be solved, including aerial siting on the aircraft and also a quarter- second delay in the signal, presumably making for rather a staccato dialogue between pilot and controller. This latter point intrigues me: at school, in order to avoid the misplaced interest of authority, we developed a very simple but effective language code by adding AG before each vowel—my girl friend's name became Nagoraga. I remember. It caused us no trouble once we mastered the delay technique. "It is understood that the Algerian authorities are planning a VHF repeater station way down into the Sahara: this should alleviate the communication problem but is unlikely to solve it. CONTAINER/PALLET COMPENDIUM UNTIL the appearance in the 1970s of the end-loaded Boeing 747F and, possibly, the Lockheed L-500 civil Galaxy, the requirements for air-freight containers must necessarily continue to be very different from those for surface transport. The latest reference compendium in the Jane's series, dealing with freight containers,* is primarily concerned with surface trans port, but about 40 of the 600 pages are most usefully devoted to the requirements and hardware in the air-freight business. As the editors of this section explain in their introduction, the word "container" when applied to surface transport refers normally to the International Standards Organisation unit as used on road/rail/sea routes with maximum dimensions of 8ft X 8ft x 40ft long. In air transport the word "container" 'Jane's Freight Containers. 1968-69 (First Edition). A worldwide survey of unil load operation and equipment. Sampson Low, Marston & Co Ltd, London Wl : £10 10s. may well in the future relate to this type of unit, but is applied at present to the 17 unit-load devices which have been given "standard" status by the International Air Transport Association and which are designed to fit into present aircraft interior dimensions. These containers will continue in use for a great many years while the present generation of big jets. predominantly with side loading, remain in service. After the explanatory introduction the section on air freight first runs through the development of the IATA standards, listing the association's members and giving a useful glossary of the terms used. The design criteria for the lATA-registered unit load packs are then explained. This is followed by a list of manufacturers of air-freight containers and detailed illus trated descriptions of the pallets and containers used by different airlines, with a list, also, of the manufacturers of airline-owned containers. The section concludes with 12 pages of illustrated descriptions of all the aircraft now used for cargo work and those which will be coming into service during the 1970s.
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