On 18 June, 1914 Lawrence, son of Elmer Sperry (founder of the Sperry Gyroscope Company) flew over a crowd assembled at Argenteuil, near Paris (Fig. 1). His aircraft was a Curtiss C2 flying boat and the purpose of the flight was to demonstrate the Sperry Gyroscopic Stabilizer in a competition organized by the Aero Club of France. It was a dramatic demonstration. On the first pass over the crowd Lawrence Sperry stood up and held both hands in the air whilst his mechanic, Emile Cachin, walked out on the wing and stood holding one of the struts. The lateral stability of the aeroplane was undisturbed, but the spectators were able to see the ailerons move to compensate for the engineer's weight. This performance was repeated several times and Sperry also demonstrated the automatic ‘volplaning’ function of the system which caused the aircraft to dive and regain speed in the event of an approach to the stall. The company was awarded a prize of 50000 francs as winner of the competition.

The title of this paper could possibly be misleading in that it suggests that we already have a solution for a problem which is still open or at least a conclusion from an investigation which is still under way.

Accordingly, we should define straight away, subject to subsequent elaboration, (a) what we mean by an ‘advanced terminal area’, (b) what in such a context could be envisaged in terms of advantages for the aviation community, namely both the airspace users and the air traffic authorities, and finally (c) what new tools, both in the air and on the ground, would be desirable or essential in order to achieve a given degree of progress.

This paper outlines some of the results being achieved by the UK research programme on civil avionics which is based at RAE Bedford. Acknowledgments are therefore due to members of the civil avionics team and UK industry from whose work these examples are drawn, and not least to the Department of Trade and Industry who fund the programme.

No attempt is made to define ‘flight management systems’. The concept, originating in the complex outer loops of autopilots, has now come to include all the detail involved in managing the flight deck systems as well as planning and controlling the aircraft's progress from ramp to ramp. As this paper will hope to demonstrate, the concept is still growing.

The term flight management system (or FMCS, flight management computer system) is used to cover some equipment types which have been coming into service in recent years. In this context, it is taken to mean a system for handling horizontal and vertical navigation by various means (as distinct from purely performance management systems).

Such an FMS consists of a computer or computers fed by data from a variety of services, and outputting information and control signals. In horizontal navigation, inputs may be inertial sensors and/or ground-based radio navigation facilities. For performance optimization, data are fed from a number of aircraft systems. This type of system is capable of independently computing several parameters and ‘pooling’ their information to provide a ‘best estimate’. Cockpit information in INS configuration is confined to specific digital displays and data input is, in the main, manual and limited to numerics. FMS goes a number of stages further and provides ‘pre-loaded’ storage of navigational information, and the ability to gain access to this information through an alphanumeric keyboard. It also handles, either directly or through a thrust management computer, the vertical profile of the flight. This includes both climb and descent, and cruise control.

During the XIIth International Hydrographic Conference, held at Monaco in 1982, Anderson and this writer discussed Communication of the Nautical Chart. In that paper they traced the historical development of the nautical chart, noting how it had evolved and that features of the chart today had resulted more by evolution than by actual design. They noted, for instance, that although present-day charts are often produced by computer and make limited use of colour, they are not significantly different from charts produced some two hundred years ago. Computer methods have been used primarily to copy the work that was carried out so skilfully by the draughtsmen of earlier years. The authors after examining the historical development of the chart then touched lightly on some particular Canadian problems and went on to discuss the first principles of chart design. In particular they suggested that modern cartographic communications research might offer some help in developing the future design of the nautical chart. This paper is therefore a sequel to that work and is directed to presenting some ideas and furthering the discussion.

In the history of navigation, the subject of Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) is a comparative newcomer. Nevertheless, it has and is generating interest, controversy and discussion analogous almost with the change from sail to steam or the advent of radar at sea. Interestingly though, much of the VTS debate has taken place within the industry itself—i.e. amongst the nautical professions, shipping companies and governmental marine regulatory agencies. This has resulted in a deservedly strong technical emphasis on the subject which, after all, is primarily concerned with marine safety. Legal questions have so far been sidelined or reduced to background interest. Legal problems relating to accident liability have been rarely discussed and when they were, have often been distorted.

Traffic separation schemes and other routing measures have now been established in the coastal waters of many countries and new schemes are being introduced each year. Traffic separation was originally intended to reduce the risk of collision between ships proceeding in opposite directions but this paper explains how routing measures are now being used mainly for coastal protection. Improvements in navigational aids may lead to more extensive routing schemes in the future with increasing restriction on the movement of shipping.

The first traffic separation schemes adopted by IMCO (now IMO) in 1965 and 1968 were based on proposals made by the Institutes of Navigation of France, the Federal German Republic and the United Kingdom. In the report submitted to the Organisation by the Institutes in 1964 it was stated that ‘the object of any form of routing is to ease the congestion and lessen the likelihood of end-on encounters by separating opposing streams of traffic …’.

The second half of the present century has witnessed the advent of intensified conflict of sea-use. The elements of this are well known: expanding international trade, carried in more numerous, often larger, and faster ships; the exploitation of oil and gas deposits under the sea bed; and always the fisheries, life-support of much of the still increasing population of the world.

The particular aspect of sea-use conflict which the establishment of Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) is intended to resolve is that arising from the concentration of shipping in the approaches to great ports, and in straits. The protagonists in this conflict are, on the one hand, any authority on shore which, with or without the sanction of international agreement, seeks to impose order upon the flow of vessel traffic, and on the other, the masters of vessels, each of whom is responsible ‘under God’ for the safe navigation of his ship. The pilot, as professional adviser to both the protagonists is now acquiring a new responsibility as ‘ honest broker’ between the ship master and the port authority. Indeed, it would accord with this role if the pilot were to be paid, in some proportion, by the port authority as well as by the shipowner. Be that as it may, since the establishment in 1948, at Liverpool, of the world's first port radar station, it could be said that experience has confirmed that by far the most important features of a Vessel Traffic Service are its radar coverage, which provides ‘the authority’ with an overview of all traffic in the area of responsibility; and the v.h.f. radio network for voice communication with the pilots, shipmasters, tugmasters and other individuals directly concerned with the operation of the port. It is a curious fact that, so far, there has been no concerted move to introduce the technological device required to enable the port operator to correlate an echo on his radar display with its corresponding identity and hence, radio call sign. It is the aim of this paper to compare the existing means of identification and recognition of radar contacts in a VTS with what is technically and economically feasible; to determine the operational requirement; and to set out the characteristics of a system which would meet the requirement.

In text books on astro navigation, the fact that the Earth is not spherical in shape is seldom discussed and therefore one presumes it does not have a significant effect on the accuracy of sight reduction, and yet it is quite remarkable that it is not uncommon to find discussions of the phenomenon of augmentation (a correction to the altitude or semi-diameter of the Moon that amounts to about 0·25 at an altitude of 60°) in these books. It will be shown that discrepancies of the same order of magnitude as augmentation may be present in the calculated altitude of the Moon because of neglecting to take into account the shape of the Earth.

In the following (1) rigourous expressions for correcting the observed altitude and geocentric declination of a body close to the Earth are derived, (2) simple expressions which are sufficiently exact for the purpose of sight reduction for the Moon are given, and (3) an example, using different methods of reduction, is shown in detail to illustrate the theory.

The design of a route through Dover Strait to Europoort for very large carriers (VLCs) with a draught of up to 22 metres is described. The results are compared with established international safety criteria. A number of subjects for further study by institutes of navigation are mentioned. Van Riet (DG Shipping and Maritime Affairs), Kaspers (Public Works, North Sea Directorate) and Buis (Hydrographic Service, Royal Navy) participated in this design process. The views expressed, however, are those of the authors and not necessarily those of their organizations.

Since 1974 deep-draught ships of up to 20·70 metres (68 feet) have been navigating the English Channel and the Dover Strait with destination Europoort in the Netherlands. To a lesser extent ships with these large draughts have been passing through the Strait with destinations in Scandinavian countries.

When considering user charges for the provision and maintenance of marine aids to navigation, it must be recognized that the basis on which they are calculated and levied is to a large extent due to historical accident. There is no internationally recognised system for levying these dues and every country has its own ideas as to how much money, if any, should be raised by this means.

User charges paid by shipping for marine aids to navigation normally fall into two categories. First there are national charges which go towards the running of the national lighthouse authority, either in whole, or in part. Such charges are referred to in this paper as ‘light dues’.

When the satellite era commenced more than a quarter of a century ago, one could hardly foresee the world wide revolution it heralded in the development of aids to navigation for merchant shipping. However, early investigations into the possible application of satellites to maritime needs led to an understanding of the powerful potential of satellite techniques for navigation. It became clear that if the international maritime community was really interested in a global all-weather, high-precision and commercially viable navigation system; such a system could only be satellite-based. This is evident from the situation that has recently arisen in IMO, where after exhaustive discussion on the mandatory carriage of electronic position-fixing equipment on ships in designated areas, the organization could not express a preference for any particular aid, until it was decided that efforts should be made to develop a global satellite navigation system capable of meeting a new standard of navigational accuracy. Moreover, in preparing the navigational accuracy standard, account was taken of experience gained with existing satellite navigation systems.

The subject of this paper is the merchant marine user requirements for position fixing systems (a merchant marine with approximately 40000 ships operating). These requirements are varied and can be summarized as follows:

(i) accuracy

(ii) availability (possible fix frequency)

(iii) reliability

(iv) coverage

(v) user skill and workload

(vi) presentation of information

(vii) ambiguity

(viii) environmental constraints

(ix) operational constraints

(x) system control

(xi) system user costs.

These eleven requirement elements should together serve the two basic purposes of merchant marine navigation: (a) provide a service adequate for safety and (b) enhance economic performance/benefit.

It is clear that global civil navigation systems have already had a major impact on marine users, and are likely to continue to do so for the future. There is not a marine industry as such in this context, but a number of different classes of marine user, each of which has different requirements, different expectations, and even different viewpoints within a single class. There is even a difference between the viewpoint of what I might call the establishment — governments, IMO and the like — which are concerned with safety, protecting the environment, and such matters, and whose interest embraces a numerical minority of vessels and sea, and vessel operators in general, who represent a potential market of very considerable size and importance. This market, I suspect, will be driven by commercial considerations, and not — at least initially at any rate — by regulation.

In 1967 a compilation of visual wave data was published as a book with the title Ocean Wave Statistics, which is still widely used. In 1983 work began on the development of a new global atlas of wave statistics which will be available both as a book and as a computer database. This task is being undertaken by NMI Ltd in collaboration with the UK Meteorological Office with funding from the Department of Industry and is expected to take about three years. A preliminary account of the project has already been published. This article briefly recapitulates the case for the new atlas and updates the indication previously given of the proposed form of the contents, which has been revised in the light of comments received. Reference will be included to the plans for an associated database not mentioned in the previous account.

Between proof stage and printing, a line in the paper by Dr Nagaoka published in Vol. 37, May 1984, p. 216, was omitted. The paragraph in question should read: ‘9. conclusions. A method for obtaining a rough estimate of the indicated altitude of cruising aircraft from the ground using data taken by a height-finding radar is presented. The data contains the measured height, the pressure and temperature of the air on the ground.’