The destruction of the AM band started long before IBOC

[faaradar]

I know: it sounds really weird. But the damn thing worked. Nobody was more surprised than me.

Another thing we could do is use longwave for IBOC. Kick the antiquated aircraft beacons off of there - they are outmoded since the advent of GPS.

If we get rid of the beacons and other ground-based navigational aids; it would only take a coordinated attack or jamming of our GPS satellites to throw our whole aviation industry into the crapper. The Iraqis were using Russian-made GPS jammers that had amazing effects on our GPS-guided missiles. Imagine if there were no ground-based backups for GPS-enabled aviation and some group of terrorists decided to jam our airspace system! Now that would be economic upheaval.

 

[CW]

I know: it sounds really weird. But the damn thing worked. Nobody was more surprised than me.

Another thing we could do is use longwave for IBOC. Kick the antiquated aircraft beacons off of there - they are outmoded since the advent of GPS.

If we get rid of the beacons and other ground-based navigational aids; it would only take a coordinated attack or jamming of our GPS satellites to throw our whole aviation industry into the crapper. The Iraqis were using Russian-made GPS jammers that had amazing effects on our GPS-guided missiles. Imagine if there were no ground-based backups for GPS-enabled aviation and some group of terrorists decided to jam our airspace system! Now that would be economic upheaval.

I disagree....Longwave is outdated...you have VOR and DME on aircraft....GPS is third...why continue to use VLF when the only ones really using it are submarines (the only radio that can penetrate water well except for lasers) and only in two or three freq slots..hams are starting to get allocations down there (136kHz and others) because a lot of countries have quit using them. IBOC would be a good spot there and they could still be used as navigation aids..just include it in the digital stream!

 

[faaradar]

I disagree....Longwave is outdated...you have VOR and DME on aircraft....GPS is third...why continue to use VLF when the only ones really using it are submarines (the only radio that can penetrate water well except for lasers) and only in two or three freq slots..hams are starting to get allocations down there (136kHz and others) because a lot of countries have quit using them. IBOC would be a good spot there and they could still be used as navigation aids..just include it in the digital stream!

I made the assumption that the original author's comments were directed toward all ground-based navaids. There is a push in this country to get rid of all ground-based navaids. I disagree on the basis that we need a secure backup to GPS navigation. GPS nav is great; but I feel that putting our entire airspace system into that bucket is short-sighted and dangerous.

We have been decommissioning Non-Directional Beacons in a slow deliberate fashion for some time; and I can agree with that.