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Old 16th Feb 2012, 04:11
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ICT_SLB
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
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Scottso,
As far as verifying radio aids after an accident is concerned, if it involved an aircraft fitted with a modern Flight Data Recorder, it should be perfectly possible to verify the ILS beam structure without further flights. The general principle is to reconstruct the aircraft's flight path back up from the touchdown point or the position it ended up at using data from either the Inertial Reference System or the Triaxial Accelerometer. The FDR also records the Localiser & Glideslope at regular intervals so the overall beam can then also be reconstructed. For example, if the aircraft was 20 feet to the left of the centreline but the Localiser gave the equivalent of 40 feet left, it would be evidence that the beam was off by 20 feet for the accident flight.
FDRs also record Latitude & Longitude usually from the FMS (which is actually taken from the GPS) so if the received GPS signal was off that too would be evident to an investigator.
Can't help you with UK Flight Inspection - in the US it's the FAA and in Canada it used to be Transport Canada but may be NavCanada now.
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