Philthy

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again! The Airways Museum, Essendon Airport, is having its annual Open Day on Sat 14 Nov.

Full details are available at Airways Museum / Civil Aviation Historical Society

The program includes a presentation by Adjunct Professor Brian O'Keeffe AO on The Genesis of FANS.

Professor O'Keeffe, known as the 'Father of FANS' has a long and distinguished career in navaid development. He presented the first paper proposing an ILS replacement to ICAO in 1967, which led to the development of MLS. He was later instrumental in developing the concept for the Future Air Navigation System (FANS) - known to us today operationally as the Global Positioning System (GPS), Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) and Controller-Pilot Datalink Communications (CPDLC).

In 2004 Professor O'Keeffe recieved ICAO's highest award, the Edward Warner award, for his work on air navigation systems.

The Airservices Australia/Aeropearl Flight Inspection aircraft will also be open for inspection on the day.

Philthy

Unfortunately, operational requirements mean that the Airservices Australia/Aeropearl King Air that was scheduled to be open for inspection at the Open Day will now not be available. That's aeroplanes for you, I suppose!

But never mind, we have scheduled some additional activities which will be just as interesting:

- at 12 noon and again at 3.30 pm Geoff Robinson from Airservices Australia will present an illustrated talk on the current Flight Inspection Service and demonstrate the flight inspection software

- at 3 pm the Museum's new working GRAS (Ground-based Regional Augmentation System) exhibit will be officially opened