How big a deal......? HELP!!!

[Jackonicko]

Here at Farnborough, Honeywell are getting terribly excited about their M3AR radio, a dual band job operating on both the civil VHF and military UHF bands, with 8.33 kHz channel spacing, FM broadcast immunity, and frequency hopping.

It's primarily for out-sourced FSTA type tankers, but they say "has obvious further implications post September 11".

One clown insisted that USAF aircraft couldn't communicate with civil aircraft before - but surely even the Sovs had VHF and 121.5 at the end of the Cold War and the Spams must have, surely, on every platform.

Surely the only big deal is that this is dual band in one box, or if it can simultaneously broadcast in both?

Help!:eek:

[Fox3snapshot]

No they cannot all communicate with civil aircraft and far more importanatly civil ATC, especially carrier based aircraft. There is still a number of their fighter assets equipped with UHF only. This of course makes things very difficult and, on recent occassions.....dangerous!

[Jackonicko]

Thanks Foxy!

That's so surprising that I'd be sooooo grateful if someone could confirm it!

[Iron City]

He's kind of right.

USAF/USN TACAIR have limited real estate in the cockpit and tend to not have VHF com to talk to the hopelessly behind the times civil world. The larger trash haulers etc and the training command aircraft that have to fly more in the domestic airspace tend to have VHF. The nower the a/c the more probable it has VHF

ATC has UHF coverage all over the place. While it is true a military jet may not be able to talk on UNICOM or get the lights to come on at Lower Podunk Municipal Airport the can talk to Center, Tracon and most towers.

Other good deal for Honeywell on this is the first breaths of a new air/ground com system are being taken that will use some kind of narrow channel, digital, all singing all dancing majic radio that will do voice, data and several wide bands of weather and entertainment. FAA will pay for ATC services by providing movies on the uplink and the airliner cabins will be all video monitored on the downlink so they can see whether the guy in 18B is picking his nose or something. Question is who will they pay what to watch this stuff?

[Fox3snapshot]

IC "Kind of right"...

Totally right, in fact I can give you a callsign, time and a place where a US C130 entered our airspace last night and could not communicate with us as he was only UHF equipped and I must stress it wasn't due to unservicability, our centre is not equipped with UHF as all our local military can afford VHF radio's!

I think you are basing your comments on the US airspace with respect to UHF coverage. I have worked two different centres in two different parts of the world where there was no UHF coverage in the civil centre. The military centres I have worked for different story, and a retransmit facility was also available. But that's not much use to anybody when the aircraft is 400 miles from home on a navex dealing with civil control agencies.

We would deal with 2-3 non VHF equipped US miitary aircraft per week. With a defence budget of 1 Billion dollars per day (quoting the latest Flight International figures), I believe a bubby little cheap off the shelf VHF radio wouldn't be too much to ask???!!!!!

:cool:

[ORAC]

I'd need to see the full spec on the radio to see if it really what is wanted for the next generation.

8.33Mhz spacing is good to allow use in Europe for voice, but is it VDL-2 data compatible?

The FAA is, however, not going down the 8.33Mhz route but is going to stay with 25Mhz spacing, but with 4 data channels using VDL-3, is the radio VDL-3 compatible?

It is, I believe software driven and both both SATURN (Second-generation of Anti-jam Tactical UHF Radio for NATO (SATURN)) and CINCGARS ready)

The next software driven US forces radio systems are, however, being designed to the JTRS standard which also includes HF, HF SSB with ALE, SATCOM, EPLRS, L16, SADL etc and allows any other waveform to be added by software update. JTRS radios can also use/access 4-6 different bands/waveforms simultaneously.

Is this a JTRS compliant radio?

VDL-2/3/4 (http://www.ainonline.com/issues/02_02/02_02_nexcomfuturepg64.html)

JTRS (http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.cfm?Id=304)

Raytheon JTRS radio specification (http://www.raytheon.com/c3i/c3iproducts/c3i013/images/ss_jtrs.pdf)

[Fox3snapshot]

ORAC,

Wow mate, you really have some good gen on the techo stuff!! We just push buttons and talk on our ATC microphone, hoping that the technicians have done their homework and something will come out the other end!!!!

By the way "ORAC", of "Blakes 7" vintage I am guessing...loved it as a kid, grew up with it, and I grew up in outback Australia!!!

Keep the jargon coming, it is encouraging me to take an intrest in what the doods are doing behind my radar consol, apart from the obligatory coffee break!

:D :) :D

:cool: