Ground Radar

[Dr.bob7]

I was flipping channels last night I came acoss CNN and there investigation on New York Airspace and its heavy delays, they said congress is pushing A new ground radar system, they mentioned the current system is less advanced than your cars GPS  :-/

[Craig.]

its not a surprise really. It doesn't need to be that advanced as it's only covering an area the size of JFK, your car gps has to cover the area of the country really.

[Brett_Henderson]

Radar ?  

Farmers have been using GPS to  plow/sow/reap perfectly straight lines in their fields, for years.

Nowadays, even 30 year-old 172s have a GPS.

Why a multi-million jet doesn't have a transponder-like device that reports its taxiing position to the tower (and all other aircraft on the ground) makes ya wonder.  ::)

[Ashar]

Radar ?  

Farmers have been using GPS to  plow/sow/reap perfectly straight lines in their fields, for years.

Nowadays, even 30 year-old 172s have a GPS.

Why a multi-million jet doesn't have a transponder-like device that reports its taxiing position to the tower (and all other aircraft on the ground) makes ya wonder.  ::)

Because they have TCAS?

[Brett_Henderson]

Because they have TCAS?

That helps THAT plane (and some TCAS only report aircraft with squawking transponders).. it doesn't help the tower guys  ;)

[RitterKreuz]

i suppose there are differing types of systems...

we have been taxiing around DFW when the visibility was down in the hundreds of feet RVR. the ground controllers always seem to know when to cross us and when to tell us to hold short.

you have to put a lot of faith in them, when your holding short of a runway at midfield and the sky above you just lights up with a glowing orb as a plane takes off and then they tell you to cross its like "Hmmm hope this guy us keeping an eye on things" because you wouldn't see an aircraft on the roll out until he was hitting you!

the one at DFW seems to be pretty good though.

oh... and TCAS is inhibited on the ground by the way, and only detects mode C or better transponders... so if the conflicting aircraft has no transponder, or it is turned off or not on altitude mode it wouldn't do you any good regardless of if you are on the ground or in the air.

[Craig.]

Ritter, wasn;t DFW recently overhauled in a lot of areas? New terminals taxiways and such?

[Brett_Henderson]

If a plane has a GPS, that GPS knows it's location in three dimensions. If there was a transponder-like device to "squawk" that information, it would be available to any other plane or tower with the equipment to receive it. AND there can be an active data-base (kinda like real-time weather, that's already available to even GA aircraft (I flew a C310 that had it.. WAY cool)) so that any plane, any tower, anywhere... could see where any other plane is. Heck..  you could even zoom in on an airport well before you land to see how crowded the taxiways are ..   You could even monitor that system from the ground, because the data could also be kept on-line.

I heard talk about this system, a few years back...

[RitterKreuz]

Ritter, wasn;t DFW recently overhauled in a lot of areas? New terminals taxiways and such?

they built a new terminal which is more like a modern mall than an airline terminal... and they put in the skylink train, an automated, mid-speed elevated train that connects the terminals inside security. i ride it daily and it makes life a lot easier. you can manage to make every stop on the airport airport in about 12 minutes.

i am not aware of new taxiways, though a few of the existing taxiways were rehabilitated

[C]

Simple answer.

Money.

[Chris_F]

Simple answer.

Money.

I'd bet it's more about politics than money.  I suspect airlines and/or airports would be more than willing to spend the money on such a system.

[C]

Simple answer.

Money.

I'd bet it's more about politics than money.  I suspect airlines and/or airports would be more than willing to spend the money on such a system.

A thing to keep in mind is not all the airlines an operators using the airspace could necessarily afford it.

[a1]

why can't they just go back to people with binoculars sitting in a tower.