Graham Warwick/ATLANTA
A UNIQUE PRECISION-approach aid has been installed at Watertown Airport in Wisconsin and is awaiting approval. Final US Federal Aviation Administration approval of Advanced Navigation & Positioning's (ANPC) transponder landing-system (TLS) is expected in October.
The TLS is a low-cost Category I landing system for use at small- and medium-sized airports and heliports, which cannot afford an instrument landing-system (ILS). Multiple ground-based receivers are used to determine an aircraft's position based on interrogation of its air-traffic-control transponder, then steering commands are transmitted via the standard ILS localiser and glide-slope frequencies.
The TLS can be used, by any ILS equipped aircraft without modification. Demonstration flights using the Watertown installation were conducted during the US Experimental Aircraft Association convention at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in late July.
Watertown is the first commercial TLS location, says Hood River, Oregon-based ANPC. Negotiations to sell test sites in place at Madras, Oregon, and Dallesport, Washington, to the appropriatae airport authorities are under way.
Source: Flight International
