News

Satellite EPIRBs in international rescue of SoCal teenager

Two emergency beacons played a crucial part in the rescue of teenage round-the-worlder Abby Sunderland when her boat Wild Eyes was dismasted in one of the remotest places on Earth. The image (Thanks to Google Earth) shows the position at which she was dismasted at the centre -- and shows just how far she was from any major land.

Sixteen year-old Abby was hoping to become the youngest person ever to sail non stop around the world when she set out from Marina del Rey in a 40ft sailboat in January, but a succession of autopilot problems forced her to put in to Cape Town for repairs. The time in port cost her the non-stop record, but it also delayed her so that she set out into the southern ocean at the end of May -- the beginning of winter.

In sixty-knot winds and 25-foot waves, she was on the satellite telephone to her family when they suddenly lost contact. About an hour later, her parents got a call from the US Coastguard at Alameda, saying that a signal had been received from one of Abbey's three emergency beacons.

The position given was -- almost exactly mid-way between Africa and Australia -- two thousand miles from both -- but they were reassured when they found that the beacon ID code was that of Abby's manually-operated EPIRB, rather than her automatically-operated float-free beacon. At least it meant that Wild Eyes was afloat, and probably the right way up, and that Abby was still on board and physically able to operate the EPIRB.

A few minutes later, the Australian coastguard received another distress signal from Abby -- this time from her Personal Locator Beacon.

Attempts to regain contact with Abby by satcom failed, so the Australian coastguard chartered an airliner to investigate. At first light the following morning -- after a search that lasted less than ten minutes -- Abby's boat was found. 

Being dismasted meant that Abby had lost her satcom, MF/HF radio, and VHF, so she could only communicate with the aircraft briefly, by hand-held VHF. But briefly was enough: a fishing boat, from the isolated Kerguelan Islands (just over 500 miles away) was able to locate Abby and pick her up to start her journey home.

The US Air Force has launched the first of a new generation of GPS satellites -- known as "Block 2F". The new satellite was launched at the end of May, and is expected to be "set healthy" after three months of in-orbit testing at the end of August. It joins an existing constellation of thirty two, where it will take over from a "Block 2A" satellite that was launched in 1996.

The $121million (about £80 million) satellite includes more accurate atomic clocks than its predecessors. These, combined with new frequencies and new ways of transmitting, should eventually add up to greater accuracy and better resistance to accidental interference or deliberate jamming. A new reprogrammable processor is being used, so that the satellite can be upgraded in orbit, and its planned life expectancy has been extended to 12 years -- compared with seven years originally envisaged for its predecessors.

But it's only just over a year since the US Government's own Government Accountability Office warned that there was a significant risk that we might well see the number of operational satellites falling to eighteen -- six short of the intended minimum -- during the coming decade. Its calculations were based on the assumption that existing satellites would soon start failing faster than their replacements could be launched -- and on the assumption that replacement satellites would be launched two years behind schedule.

This first Block 2F satellite is already four years behind schedule, and the satellite that it replaces is not being pensioned off. Despite being more than six years past its use-by date it is being moved to a different position in the constellation to serve as a back-up for satellites that are even older and frailer.
Photos courtesy Los Angeles A.F. and Boeing

Garmin offers 15p per share for Raymarine
After more than two years of rumour and speculation, Garmin has offered 15 pence per share for Raymarine, in a cash offer equivalent to almost  £12.5million. Raymarine shares -- which were once valued at £4.90, but have been below 5p throughout the first quarter of this year -- immediately trebled in price.

But depite debts of £95million (and rising), the board of the British company is still playing hard to get.

Having already warned shareholders that any offer from such a close competitor as Garmin might be blocked by american anti-monopolies legislation, the board claimed that it was in "advanced negotiations" with another potential buyer who was expected to make a better offer.

Glonass: three steps forward
The Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, has announced that three more Glonass satellites were successfully launched, just after midnight on 2 March (21:19 on 1 March, UK time). The launch was postponed from September, to allow time to check that faults found on an earlier satellite had not been repeated on these three.

The new satellites are not expected to be operational until mid April, and even then, they are expected to replace three older satellites that have already been taken out of service, rather than adding to the total.

But their launch brings the total number of Glonass satellites in orbit to 23But there are two more launches planned for later this year, with three satellites on each launch, so with no other  satellites due to “retire” in the near future it seems likely that Glonass will soon achieve the 24 active satellites and three spares that are required for world-wide coverage.

The illustration shows the current percentage availability of Glonass as at May 2010. Pale green is 80% available; pale yellow is 95% available; white is 24x7 coverage.

Light dues and compulsory registration... again
A report commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT) has recommended compulsory registration of private pleasure craft, with a £100 annual fee, to contribute to the cost of providing buoys, lighthouses, and other aids to navigation around the British Isles.

The controversial proposal is one of more than fifty recommendations that are included in the 255-page report, prepared by consultants Atkins Ltd.

In a written statement to Parliament, Shipping Minister Paul Clark played down the issue of compulsory registration, and chose, instead, to highlight three key recommendations:-
     the creation of a "Joint Strategic Board" to drive efficiencies
     the use of an annual target reduction calculator to reduce running costs; and
     the development of a "roadmap" to ensure that the Republic of Ireland pays for its own aids to navigation, rather than being subsidised by the UK.

Compulsory licensing and its associated fees are not yet part of government policy nor a proposal for legislation, but the RYA is treating the threat seriously: its Chief Legal Officer, Gus Lewis, has written to Paul Clark, highlighting concerns that the authors of the report have based their recommendations and conclusions on false assumptions and not taken due account of the views of stakeholders in the recreational sector.” and has already been in discussions with the officials who will be responsible for advising whoever takes over his job after the election.

Light dues
The UK has a complicated system of paying for "Aids to Navigation" (AtoNs) that has evolved over hundreds of years.

Three "General Lighthouse Authorities" (GLAs), (Trinity House, the Northern Lighthouse Board, and the Commissioners of Irish Lights) are responsible for 357 lighthouses and just over 700 major buoys, using money allocated from the General Lighthouse Fund (GLF). More than 10,000 "Local Aids" are provided by harbour authorities, and funded from harbour dues,

Most recreational craft don't contribute to the GLF. We do, however, pay harbour dues, so the assertion that "recreational craft don't pay for lights and buoys" is simply not true.

Income for the GLF comes from "light dues" -- a tax by any other name -- that is imposed on commercial vessels on the basis of their notional cargo-carrying capacity, every time they call at a British or Irish port. The maximum charge, however, is limited by a "tonnage cap", and the number of times it is charged is limited by a "voyage cap"

The system was dismissed as "unfair and outdated" by a parliamentary select committee more than 170 years ago, as well as many times since, and in 1993 the Labour party promised that it would abolish light dues.

In June last year, however, the government increased light dues from 35p per ton to 39p per ton, with a further increase to 41p per ton due in June this year. But changes to the tonnage and voyage "caps" mean that for many ships that frequently call at british ports, the situation is far worse than the headline figures suggest: the maximum annual bill has risen by 72%, from £85750  to £147600.

Plane speaking

The MAIB's latest report deals with a high speed grounding that left one member of a RIB’s four man crew dying of head injuries. It glosses over the fact that the men were trying to find their way out of an unlit and unfamiliar harbour, at night, and with no experience or training in night navigation.

Instead, it majors on the fact that the four had spent the evening in a local pub. It claims that “a life has been lost due to the consumption of alcohol”, and devotes five full pages to expounding the evils of the demon drink.

Mind you, the same report also refers repeatedly to a "GPS mapper", and even includes a footnote describing this unusual piece of equipment. A photograph, in the same report, shows that the thing in question was a perfectly ordinary chart plotter … or an “Electronic Chart System” if you prefer the official MCA-approved jargon. But maybe the inspectors aren’t as familiar with those terms as they are with the effects of alcohol.
 
Another footnote explains that "A displacement craft planes when power is applied, enabling it to climb onto its own bow wave."

Illustrations:-
TOP: A displacement craft mysteriously failing to climb onto its own bow wave
BELOW: A "GPS Mapper" of the type fitted to the ill-fated RIB

Sit Vac
Coincidentally, the job of Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents, has just come up for grabs.

Based in Southampton “with some overseas travel” the job pays about £100k, and calls for “excellent leadership skills, a professional background at a senior level within the marine industry, as well as a professional qualification in a recognised marine discipline,” -- but evidently not a working knowledge of the distinction between planing and displacement craft

Twice in the 180-word job description, the MAIB describes itself as “the world leader in marine accident investigation”. Like so much of what has come out of the MAIB over recent years, the claim is almost completely meaningless and impossible to substantiate.

Another setback for Galileo
It has been reported that the EC has reduced the number of Galileo satellites it will order this year. The two consortia still in the bidding race had originally been asked to bid for contracts to build 28 or 30 satellites, but they have now been asked to quote for 8, 16, or 22.

The EC claims that this is to "allow satellite design modification early in the system’s life". But it is also true that saving a million Euros here would help mitigate 0.4 billion Euros that have already been overspent in the in-orbit validation phase.

The news is not expected to go down well with the European Parliament, who had been led to expect that 3.4 billion euros would see the system fully operational by 2013. The latest best guess at when Galileo will become operational has now slipped to 2016.
Photo: European Space Agency: One of the two existing in-orbit validatioon satellites, prior to launch

UK Borders under attack
There is growing anger over the heavy-handed behaviour of the UK Borders Agency, whose black-clad paramilitaries have taken to using high speed ribs to carry out random stop and search raids on pleasure craft at sea.

The RYA has been receiving an increasing number of reports from yachtsmen and motorboaters who have been intimidated by the UKBA boarding parties, and says it has formally complained to the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration about their conduct. It has also challenged the raiders’ right to demand documents such as crew passports and registration documents, which are not required on passages within UK waters.

Suggestions that the boarding parties might be carrying weapons that have appeared on the ybw.com forum have been dismissed as “far-fetched” by an UKBA press spokesman. The same spokesman explained to me that that the gun-like object that was clearly visible on the foredeck in a PR photograph of one of the UKBA cutters was actually “something in the background, not on the boat itself”. I mentioned how odd it was that the same thing should also appear in photographs of the same boat taken at different locations, at which point it became a fire monitor.
 
But whether these government thugs are armed or not is almost irrelevant.
 
The plain fact is that they are rampaging around our waters, intimidating the people who pay their salaries and pensions, and causing far more fear and distrust than whatever or whoever they pretend to be "protecting" us from. Their chances of actually catching a serious criminal during a random raid is “vanishingly small”, so the best that can be said of them is that they allow UKBA officers to meet some arbitrary quota without infringing health and safety guidelines by doing anything that might bring them face to face with anyone who might do them harm.

Better late than never

What has been described as “a new era for European navigation” began on October 1, with the announcement that the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) open service is now available.

Only nine years later than was originally promised, EGNOS is the European counterpart to the American Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Like WAAS, it uses a network of ground-stations, spread across the continent, to monitor the signals received from GPS satellites, and calculate the errors in each one.  The forty ground stations pass their data to four control centres, which calculate appropriate corrections, and broadcast them – through the Inmarsat communications satellites -- to GPS users.

Like land-based differential GPS (dGPS) the main purpose of WAAS and EGNOS is to enhance the accuracy of GPS, reducing typical positioning errors from about 20 metres to about 2 metres. Almost all GPS receivers produced in the last ten years or so are able to receive and apply the corrections, free of charge and in most cases without any intervention on the part of the user.

Glonass setback

Glonass – the Russian equivalent to GPS – has suffered a setback, due to “a technical problem” with one of the batch of three satellites that was due to be launched on September 25. The launch is now due to take place no earlier than the end of October. Even so, Roscosmos (the Russian Space Agency) expects to launch all six remaining Glonass satellites by the end of the year.

With nineteen satellites in orbit already, the final launch – scheduled for Christmas Day – should see the constellation up to its operational strength for 24-hour, world-wide coverage.

The diagram above, downloaded from the Russian Space Agency just after midnight on the 15th of November, shows the values of PDOP  around the world. PDOP (Position dilution of precision) could  be regarded as a simple indicator of the "quality" of a position fix. For surface navigation a PDOP of 6 or better is generally regarded as acceptable. In other words, anywhere not coloured black on the diagram was getting acceptable Glonass fixes. But bear in mind that the diagram changes every few seconds... and remember that there were times in the early years of GPS when we were happy to accept anything better than 15!