GPS is used on planes. The aircraft has dozens of instruments used by the flight computer to fly the plane and track its position at any one time including GPS. Now plans are tracked in two ways. Firstly over the ocean the pilot has to report in his position every scheduled interval through radio since due to the vastness of the ocean the other methods will not work without ground stations. However when in range of ground radar the plane sends out an automated signal giving details of its altitude, speed, heading etc and send that info to ground control. Now for trackng of a crashed plan GPS cannot work. Assuming the plan crashes at position x,y,z and it knows its GPS location. That information has to be relayed to a groud station somewhere. So if the ground station is within range then the ground radar would already know where to get hold of the plane based on its last known position. If it isnt in range of ground stations then sending out a signal with its GPS location would also be useless since there would be no one to pick it up. So its more effective for a downed airline to simply have a homing device onboard to help track its location and that's what the black box does. Steve Obbayi, -----Original Message----- From: skunkworks-bounces@lists.my.co.ke [mailto:skunkworks-bounces@lists.my.co.ke] On Behalf Of nyarotho kennedy Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 5:15 PM To: Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke Subject: [Skunkworks] Air france crash: case of radar vs. GPS Good people, its amazing how airlines havent considered the use of GPS in their tracking systems( IEC Broadband reporting) yet every other valuable(cars, phones, laptops n even kids!) is GPS enabled. This is quite shocking considering the NSA's rating of GPS systems as having accuracy rates of 99.3% for last mile applications. With GPS the crash site would have been located within minutes of going off radar. Guess its something our local airlines could score a first in. Over to KQ and KCAA. Regards, nyarotho. -- People should know when they are conquered. _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks Other services @ http://my.co.ke Other lists ------------- Skunkworks announce: http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks-announce Science - http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/science kazi - http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/kazi/general