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Aviation History
1978
1978 - 0800.PDF
1490 FLIGHT International, 13 May I97B Inside Soviet ATC RUSSIAN air traffic control tech niques have always been a closed book to the European ATC industry, and the decision to buy Swedish equip ment in 1975 was interpreted by many Western observers as an admission that Soviet manufacturers weren't up to the job of producing a modern system. That contract, worth £35 mil lion to Datasaab (then Stansaab, but reorganised under the new name earlier this year), led to deliveries of equipment last year to Moscow area control centre. The Moscow, Kiev and Mineralniye Vody terminal control centres will be equipped in due course, and an ATC simulator has been bought by Aeroflot. The Swedish equipment is being linked to remote radars, most of which are being supplied by Selenia of Italy. But just four installations would be hard put-to cover the vast airspace of the Soviet Union, and it came as no surprise to discover, soon after the Swedish contract had been signed, that a home-produced system was under development. The first operational hardware from this programme was introduced at Leningrad Pulkovo Air port in 1977. Called "Start," it is a secondary surveillance radar (SSR) processing and display system which seems to have been designed to assist approach controllers in particular. Further examples of the system are expected to be commissioned at other major Soviet airports in the near future. Three sets of telephone-transmitted radar data are processed by the system, according to a report in Grazhdanskaya Aviatsiya. The sources include primary and secondary sur veillance radars and a "landing" unit, believed to be a small-scan-angle system similar to precision approach radar. Two equipment modules are used, with the information-processing equipment converting data into a digital form acceptable to the main computer. There are two main com puters—one active and one standby —and instantaneous capacity is limited to 36 aircraft. The equipment probably has a flightplan store, and data can also be entered manually. Data are processed for targets "in the immediate area of the airport," probably not more than 60 n.m. from the radar location. Leningrad has six display positions. Two are used by "zone" controllers— probably equivalent to Western out bound sector controllers—and three by "circuit and landing approach" con trollers. The sixth unit is a reserve and is probably used as much for train ing and maintenance diagnosis as for providing spare capacity. The system also has a technical control position— probably used to monitor the other equ'pment in the su:te—and means of check;ng the computer programs. Each controller position has a plan- position indicator (PPI) display which shows processed data and, possibly, raw radar information as well. SSR data appear as labels on aircraft targets, showing callsign, computer reference number, destination code, requested altitude, actual altitude, and sector controller designation. A flash ing cross appears if an aircraft is being handed over from one controller to another. The label provides little extra information and is much more cluttered than those used in most Western processed-radar systems. This could be the result of a simplified keyboard design, or might represent a belt-and-braces approach peculiar to the prototype system. Automatic iarget tracking is stan dard and can indicate predicted posi tions in two or four minutes' time. Data tables showing details of aircraft held in stacks, estimated arrival times and departure queues can also be re produced on demand. It will be interesting to see if the Soviet authorities link Start to their Western systems, and if it is in fact the first product of a domestic ATC equipment industry. This seems likely: the USSR is hardly going to install Western equipment in all of its con trol centres. An airport-based radar processing system would be the logical starting point for such a development programme. New eye on Paris taxi ways A THOMSON-CSF ground movement radar has entered service at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. The Astre radar, the first of its type to enter service, was developed for use in, all weathers at any large civil airfield. The radar operates at a frequency of 15-7-16-7GHz, with a peak power output of about 30kW. Beamwidth is only 0-33° and the aerial can be tilted. Rotation speed is 60 r.p.m. Good mapping performance out to beyond 5km is claimed in moderate precipitation. The radome which en closes the antenna is designed to withstand 120kt winds. Control-tower personnel see ground- mapping data on a high-brilliance dis play after the basic radar data have been digitally processed. Three con trast levels are used to distinguish airport detail. Thomson-CSF reports strong overseas interest in Astre and in a harbour-surveillance version. Northrop navaids for Brazil NORTHROP Corporation has won an order worth $1-7 million to supply navaids to Brazil. The contract covers 21 VOR stations and 19 DME (dis tance measuring equipment) sets, plus an instrument landing system for Galeao Airport, Rio de Janeiro. Under a second contract Northrop will provide facilities and staff to maintain nine Brazilian VOR/DME installations. The Hughes ANIAPC-65 radar under development for the F-18 Hornet strike fighter has completed initial flight trials in a modified T-39D Sabreliner. Using modern digital radar-processing tech niques, the set is expected to detect targets as effectively as the larger AN/APG-63 radar, designed about five years earlier for the F-15 Eagle. The radar has several operating modes, including "track while scan" for up to eight targets
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