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Tuesday 72 10% 36
Wednesday 52 0% 35
Thursday 64 0% 42
President’s Speaker Series
:
An Evolution not a Revolution
Richard Weakley/The Avion Newspaper
Zack Wilkinson News Editor When I think of the “Next Generation” of a product or service I think of something never-before-seen and revolutionary. I think of something different and more advanced than what came before, such as the way the Gas-turbine engine revolutionized aircraft propulsion. However, The NextGen of Air Traffic Service falls under a different category of development. Greg McGuirk, an Associate Professor for Applied Aviation Sciences said it best when he stated in a burst of excitement, “NextGen is just the current iteration of what began on December 17th, 1903 on the sands of Kitty Hawk”. Furthermore, “It’s a process. It has no real beginning or end, it’s modernizing the National Airspace system, You never stop doing that”, shared Jorge Ferrand, the Director of Advanced Programs at the Florida NextGen testbed in Daytona Beach, Florida. The Panel of Air Traffic Professionals which
came together on January 15th, 2014 for John Johnson’s ‘President’s Speaker Series’ talked of NextGen’s rise as an Evolution, not a Revolution. NextGen will take the NAS system from radar-based technology to Satellite-based technology. The auspicious group held the gathered professors, students, staff, and alumni enthralled with their answers to listener and audience questions. The panel’s conversation was also broadcasted live
from the Captain Willie Milller IC Auditorium on local radio, webcast, and Youtube. It garnered nearly 200 attendees. Each speaker introduced themselves with a short overview of their own careers. Around 85 combined years of Air Traffic experience was present on the panel. Every one of them fielded multiple questions from the audience as well as the
show’s skilled Moderator, Marc Bernier. The staff on the panel was animated, relaxed, and even comical at times. Marty Lauth, An Associate Professor of Applied Aviation Science spoke of his family of 8 controllers and joked, “We gather around the table at Christmas time and talk ATC...for any issues, we blame the pilots...always blame the pilots!” A lot of time was spent talking over numbers. NextGen devel-
opment will cost an estimated 38 Billion dollars to implement through the year 2030. However, the expected cost benefit over that time was set at around 106 billion dollars. The essence of the NextGen Evolution of ATC service focuses on safely increasing capacity through improved efficiency. NextGen Services, among other elements, will allow more direct routing of aircraft
in the enroute phase of the NAS and tighter separation on final approaches. This is largely facilitated by En Route Automation Modernization, or ERAM. Time will also be saved by the sharing of information between ATC agencies through a system called System Wide Information Management, or SWIM. These systems directly lead to less time in the air and less fuel burned. If you shave five minutes from one flight you have time to pick up a Starbucks coffee, but if you shave five minutes from thousands of flights, you save tens of millions of dollars and tons of carbon emissions.To date, around $8.3 million dollars in fuel savings are due to NextGen routing. When asked, in light of recent events, whether NextGen would prevent aircraft from landing at the wrong airport, McGuirk wisely answered, “Never say never, you can’t take the human element out of the cockpit or the TRACON”. The NextGen Testbed in Daytona Beach has the benefit of being industry and government funded. Continued on A3 >>
Friday 61 0% 42
Saturday 67 20% 47
Understanding Holding in Garmin G1000 Aircraft Christian Pezalla ATP / CFII The rapid increase of cockpit automation and satellite navigation in General Aviation has been generally well received but is not without its critics. Much of the resistance to new technology has been a concern for lack of situational awareness and an overdependence on automation. Advanced cockpits such as the Garmin 1000 are not inherently problematic, but become so when pilots fail to understand how such systems work, which is the focus of this article. The Garmin 1000 (G1000) includes a multi-function display (MFD) with an integrated moving map, like many of its competitors. One of the great features of the MFD is the ability to visually display holding patterns. But how does the system know where to put the hold and what fix it should be? These are the types of questions we should be asking when learning to fly. The G1000 contains a database of navigational data, including the location, direction of turn and leg lengths of published hold. The database is designed to
mirror paper navigational charts, including holding patterns and course reversals. Holding patterns that are not in the database, unfortunately do not have the benefit of an MFD visualization. For patterns available in the database, the question remains; how does the system determine size and shape? First, the size of the pattern is determined by the groundspeed (and not airspeed) of the aircraft and recalculates continuously increasing the hold size as speed increases, and decreasing the size of the hold as speed decreases. This means that missing or inaccurate airspeed information has no bearing on the G1000’s ability to estimate the size of the hold. The shape of the hold is determined by groundspeed and wind conditions. Wind information is drawn from the G1000, which compares ground speed and track to true airspeed and magnetic heading. In the event wind information is not available, the G1000 will assume no wind exists and draw the hold in a perfect racetrack shape, basing size solely on groundspeed. Continued on B2 >>
Composite Credit Trey Henderson/The Avion Newspaper