ATC
Loran could be used for Alaska GPS corrections
At press time, technical experts from the FAA, the U.S.

At press time, technical experts from the FAA, the U.S. Coast Guard and researchers from Ohio and Stanford Universities were due to begin a two-week flight-test program in Alaska to assess the use of loran transmitters to send out GPS WAAS messages across the state.

WAAS was designed to transmit GPS integrity (such as failure, warnings and accuracy corrections) to surface and airborne GPS users from 25,000-mi-high geostationary satellites (GEOs) above the equator. Because their orbital speed is equal to the earth’s rotational speed, GEOs appear in the northern hemisphere to be fixed in the southern sky, where they perform a number of key tasks, including ground and airborne telephone relays, TV retransmission and various long-distance data-handling requirements.