The death of airband?

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scanhermit
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The death of airband?

Post by scanhermit »

From the Telegraph:
Air traffic controllers could soon be a dying breed, as British airports are considering using digital technology to monitor planes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07 ... lers-with/

Airband is the busiest thing on my scanner. Looks like that will go dead in the not-too-distant future.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by MrWeetabix »

This reads more like an advert for the company pushing this tech than an actual article.

Yes, some smaller airports don't always have an ATC, but those are for smaller aircraft, who have procedures for flying in such airports, or more likely, fields!

Relying on remote cameras as a means of providing sufficient information to a remote controller is ludicrous. Don;t expect this crap to be mainstream anytime soon. More likely cockpit technology will ease the burden on ATC than bloody cameras on remote towers.

I can think of several safety-critical issues with this, and that's just from an ICT point of view, let-alone other ATC-specific issues.

I call BS on this one......
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kr0ne
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by kr0ne »

Where does it even suggest stopping using airband comms? The article is about remote towers, thats all. They'd still need to talk to the planes, wherever the tower staff are physically located.

And fwiw, I'm sure I've read about remote towers being used at small US airfields for quite some time now... although I can't for the life of me remember where.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by pete_uk »

A lot of small air fields use the UNICOM frequency in America when there isn't any ATC where they are landing, maybe thats it?
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by paulears »

It's like the railways. Close the local expensive signal boxes and centralise. The comparison also shows that in some cases signal boxes are still vital and still exist. If the systems the big hub towers use doesn't actually make looking out of the window that important, then the people could easily be in the bun hers the airways people sit in!
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by Tigersaw »

I've seen it and its very good. Panoramic display with visual, infra red and enhanced labelling.
Has been considered as a contingency measure for reduced movement operation during tower evacuations, but its a long long way off being the standard operation.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by LeakyFeeder »

Best not be the end of airband... Jus bought another handie as a backup....
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by StormShadow »

I hope not as that pretty much renders any scanner useless. I get plenty of air band non stop on my receiver. Its about all you can listen to now days.

Not just that but I think analog be more reliable for Air Band then that digital stuff. I know there are digital comms already in the Air-band spectrum and thats ok for certain things but the whole of air band switching to digital I think is a bad idea, to much to go wrong in my opinion.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by kr0ne »

There's not really any more or less too go wrong... a radio is either working or it is not and gets replaced. It's not like pilots and ATC break out the soldering irons when their radios begin playing up.

The problem with changing the mode of communication is the sheer number of aircraft that exist in the world and that all need to be able to communicate with each other and the ground.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by Glamdring »

Not gonna happen any time soon.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by MrWeetabix »

If it aint broke......

.....don't make it digital. :lol:
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by Admiral »

And don't commit to burdening the industry with two to three billion pounds of upgrades when the old system works just fine.
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by MrWeetabix »

exactly..... and the whole thing is pointless, as making it digital would only be of-benefit if you could condense the user base down and flog of whats left, but it's all internationally-recognised and therefore almost impossible to do so, not that you'd want every man and his Bumfeng pressed up either side of what was left, bleeding into (and potentially disrupting) critical-to-life comms....
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by Admiral »

There are already a lot of digital signals coming out of commercial aircraft, but even if the controller is Portuguese and the pilot is Canadian, the messages get across just fine via AM analogue,
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Re: The death of airband?

Post by MrWeetabix »

Keep it analogue, keep the controllers in the towers and keep it all safe and working.

If they want to make bigger profits from their operations, stick an extra quid on the price of a sandwich.
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