alt Hacker NewsWhats really sad for aviation is there was already an extensive network of ground based navaids. As GPS has proliferated, they've slowly been decommissioned as they age out to save on cost. I'm specifically referring to VORs which provide azimuth and range to station.
GPS is fantastic and as a primary source everyone loves the benefits it brings. However, in a century of aviation, everyone has kinda sorted out that you can't have too many backups to critical items... unless you let the accountants and bureaucrats run the show.
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maybe we need to update those giant concrete arrows on the ground...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Airway_System
and have giant concrete QR codes
All VORs provide a radial that you’re on. Not all provide a distance to the station. VOR/DME or VORTACs provide both. Plain VORs do not.
As more and more are decommissioned, the percentage that support distance-measuring goes up, as the ones being decommissioned are more likely to be the less-useful ones, which are less likely to have supported DME in the first place. So most remaining ones support both, but it’s not assured without checking.
Seems like we'd need a modern version that's less susceptible to jamming, otherwise aren't we just replacing one jammable service with another?
Most pre-GPS navigation systems have shorter baselines than GPS and therefore accuracy is much worse, on top of generally being more complicated
And LORAN. But it may make a come-back.
GPS signals are just incredibly weak so it takes next to nothing to drown them out, easier still if you are above the receiver.
Probably be easier and more reliable to use star navigation with modern cameras, computers and atomic clocks. Especially for commercial aircraft flying above the weather.
Guess its back to the good ol' map, compass and stopwatch.
We have starlink I am sure they can figure something out.
VOR is extremely short range and requires an extraordinary number of transmitters to provide any volume of coverage. Additionally it cannot provide coverage over oceanic areas. We USED TO have a nearly global long-range land based navigation system called LORAN, which only required one master station and a few remote stations to provide continent-scale coverage. But it was decommissioned in a cost savings move after it was determined that it could be replaced by GPS. It worked perfectly fine until it was decommissioned in 2010, not that long ago.
In the '90s I used to fly light aircraft back and forth between Seattle and Alaska. You were frequently out of range of any VOR transmitters, but that LORAN always worked. NDBs? That didn't work so great for Ron Brown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C