Cessnaflyer
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
We are flying over Bozeman with Salt Lake right now and he was saying they are installing new solid state radar. What are the improvements going to be with this system?
Solid State RADAR
- Thread starter Cessnaflyer
- Start date
Although I don't know about the specifics of air traffic control radars, a lot of the older Navy radars are not solid state and use a magnetron to generate the radar wave. It's a big vacuum tube - needs warm up time and it breaks a often. The magnetron on one of my fire control radars was always breaking and I joked about the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) was like 30 seconds and we had to order new vacuum tubes from France every time the freaking tube burned out. The AEGIS SPY-1 radars are solid state, where as the older Mk-99, SPS-49, SPS-43, CIWS radars are not.
You can also modify the radar frequency with a solid-state radar to eliminate mutual interference between radar emitters. It's harder to do with the magnetron radars, you have to order a new set of tubes and make sure they don't interfere with radars on the other ships in the task force. With the magnetron, every one is different and you can tell exactly which one it is by analyzing the radar waveform on the EW gear and hultec a specific ship hull based on the radar emitter. One of the things we did was swap radar parts, so that the other guys would be confused by which radar was whose.
So I imagine it will be increased up-time, no warm up time, less equipment rack space.
Operationally pilots won't know the difference, I don't know if the controllers will notice a difference either, but the controllers will probably notice that their radar isn't down or maintenance or repair as much.
Digitial vs analog i guess is the analogy.
You can also modify the radar frequency with a solid-state radar to eliminate mutual interference between radar emitters. It's harder to do with the magnetron radars, you have to order a new set of tubes and make sure they don't interfere with radars on the other ships in the task force. With the magnetron, every one is different and you can tell exactly which one it is by analyzing the radar waveform on the EW gear and hultec a specific ship hull based on the radar emitter. One of the things we did was swap radar parts, so that the other guys would be confused by which radar was whose.
So I imagine it will be increased up-time, no warm up time, less equipment rack space.
Operationally pilots won't know the difference, I don't know if the controllers will notice a difference either, but the controllers will probably notice that their radar isn't down or maintenance or repair as much.
Digitial vs analog i guess is the analogy.
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Cessnaflyer
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Thanks for the explanation. Now maybe I won't hear about radar outages all the time!
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
Radar of any kind will be all but gone within 15 years
Except maybe military prime
Except maybe military prime
genot
Well-Known Member
Not sure where you control but our flight data system in the US resembles a Commodore 64. Our voice lines at least where I'm at run on DOS. The most high tech I have either runs on windows xp or is by now low end walmart hardware.
Radar may be obsolete in your country in 15 years but not mine. Heck we just started running a multi site fusion radar here in anticipation of ADSB. That's the latest and greatest right? Ever seen a jet move backwards on final? That's now a daily thing for me.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
I just think since ADSB is literally 15x cheaper to buy and requires little to no upgrade or change to display functionality, why wouldn't it?
We're putting some on satellites so we will hopefully have surveillance and "radar"'separation standards everywhere, no more missed coverage areaS
GolfChuck
Trustworthy Source
And what happens when an aircraft loses its electical system, or there is a gps outage? How do you defend the ADIZ? Radar isn't going anywhere.
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
Umm...I don't think anyone suggested that primary military radar is going away.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
?? Prime radar is not how aircraft are controlled, at least in majority of countries, if you lose all electrical you lose transponder and more importantly radios anyway.
Maybe you guys get drop feeds from all military prime?
FM_Weasel
Well-Known Member
Primary radar is absolutely used in US Terminal facilities. It's used in conjunction with secondary surveillance radar, yes, but the primary return is a very useful portion of our radar presentation on the scope. Also it's what sees the precipitation we call out to pilots.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
I should say our terminal units do as well in order to provide 3nm separation.
This technology however you can have so many redundant systems in sure it would be easy to give the same level and even better surveillance.
If one airplane drops all electronics, which is rare enough, we have procedures in place for that.
Procedural separation
Cessnaflyer
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Go back to shrimp boats!
genot
Well-Known Member
I'm guessing you've a NAV Canada Centre controller. Even if I'm off base I'm sure you fall in to the Center controller profile and other than FAA but first world nation box. I'm an FAA terminal RADAR guy just by way of explaining my level of understanding. We don't exactly have the capability of running GPS direct/lost comms/he's just going to plug away the last 700 miles of his trip/no idea if he's ever landed because he disappeared from my scope 5 hours ago due to an ADSB failure. Dropping all electronics in the IFR environment is an emergency. A Cirrus with a failed or poorly made transponder (analogous to ADSB requirement) is a monthly event. The FAA ARTCC types can comment more on their ability to run non radar on GPS direct routes in the flight levels on a seconds notice though.
Strictly speaking from a TRACON standpoint, are all non ADSB equipped aircraft to be barred from class C or B? How will PRM approaches work? I don't think satellite update times will ever be better than hardwired forward facing PRM.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
Well I'm assuming you guys have PERF scenarios, radar outage scenarios?
You can lose one plane just as easy as you could under ads-b?
My understanding is that ads-b equipment is "supposed" to get so cheap and so affordable it will replace even mode C transponders in the near to medium future.
I'm not strictly speaking gps direct routes either, I have an in depth knowledge of terminal control for various different reasons but you are correct I'm currently an Enroute guy.
Maybe the 15 year is optimistic but technology is rapidly advancing and the ability for ADSB to replace radars for civilian applications is a real possibility, even for terminal control, were talking fidelity that updates target position faster, more frequent and more accurately than any radar system can, and at a fraction of the cost.
Are there pitfalls? Absolutely. Do I have the answers? No, but given the rapid advance of some of this technology I imagine those who do work in those fields have Or will have ways of making it work as good or better than current systems.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
Sorry reference your PRM question.
My understanding is ADS-B can be utilized to update target information as quickly as PRM (1 second) but I don't know if the accuracy is as good, but im guessing it's not.
PRM is a unique application of radar for sure, and honestly a pretty cool piece of tech.
I wonder if ADSB can be used to such accuracy in the future.
I guess look at the NDB, once upon a time they were an integral part of air navigation if not required for airplanes to fly IFR, now they are almost all but obsolete, aircraft now rely on technology that back then was so foreign it couldn't even be conceptualized by most people.
My understanding is ADS-B can be utilized to update target information as quickly as PRM (1 second) but I don't know if the accuracy is as good, but im guessing it's not.
PRM is a unique application of radar for sure, and honestly a pretty cool piece of tech.
I wonder if ADSB can be used to such accuracy in the future.
I guess look at the NDB, once upon a time they were an integral part of air navigation if not required for airplanes to fly IFR, now they are almost all but obsolete, aircraft now rely on technology that back then was so foreign it couldn't even be conceptualized by most people.
GolfChuck
Trustworthy Source
Procedural Separation relies on pilots making accurate position reports. Lost electrical = lost position reports.
I am an oceanic en route controller. One of my off-shore radar sectors utilizes a mosaic of 5 different long-range radar sites. The airspace is not designed for procedural control, since the probability of losing 100% radar coverage is nearly zero, and chances are if we did lose 100% of the radar, it is also likely we would have lost our frequencies as well. Additionally, the ADIZ runs through that particular sector, and if an aircraft entering the ADIZ is not radar identified within a few miles of our boundary, Eastern air defense is on the shout line wanting to know who it is. We don't even need to have a discussion about an aircraft that does not want to be seen.
If an aircraft loses its transponder, we can still radar identify and tag a data block to a primary only return if necessary. If we were ADS-B only, and an aircraft lost its electrical system, there would be no way to separate it. At least with primary, we could keep all other traffic away from the primary return. In the event the aircraft only lost ADS-B out, the only way to separate it from the rest of the aircraft in the sector would be to use vertical separation. Our other off-shore sector is located on an island with secondary-only radar. That airspace is designed for procedural control, and we use it quite often for both scheduled and unscheduled radar outages, but without two-way radio comms, that would also be impossible.
Additionally, as an oceanic controller, I probably have more experience with the use of ADS around here than anybody else, and I can tell you that although for the most part it is fairly consistent, it doesn't even come close to the reliability of radar or HF radio communication. It is true, some of that lack of reliability is due to satellite outages and solar flares, but a lot of it is equipment malfunction or configuration on the aircraft or with the flight plan. HF radio for trans-oceanic operations isn't going anywhere any time soon either.
Vector4Food
This job would be easier without all the airplanes
Well as I eluded to, as time goes on the technology will improve, and/or it will be replaced or supplemented by even better technology.
In any case SSR radar will slowly be phased out , and once PSR is augmented or replaced by equal or better technology it will be as well.
While not as fail safe as PSR, MLAT is being implemented in conjunction with ADSB and in some cases standalone to fill surveillance gaps, ICAO does apparently believe it can be used to provide more accurate target fix and update rate than PSR systems
2.2.2 Like SSR, MLAT is considered to be a co-operative surveillance technique, combining a dependence on target-derived data for identification and altitude with ground based calculation of position. MLAT can achieve a higher update rate than a typical rotating radar, determined by the intervals between aircraft transmissions (responses).