Hello Paul,
I have just been to the British National Physical Laboratory's
bi-annual "Time and Frequency" meeting in London, and gained the
strong impression that LORAN was far from dead. Apparently there was
a meeting in Prague recently, with Britain, France, and Norway all
behind eLoran, and Norway apparently has a mutual operability
agreement with Russia for their equivalent ("Chayka"?). Certainly the
British transmitter has at least another 8 years to go on their
initial ten-year contract. Despite recent pessimism on here from some
US members recently, I gained the strong impression today that the
annual $36 million operating cost was frankly such a drop in the ocean
(pardon the pun) that they would likely finance eLoran somehow, if not
by the current means. And I seem to remember we went around this
scare story last year, and I was confused by the apparent will to
close down Loran-C, but introduce eLoran - as if they were two
different systems, whereas the latter is just an upgrade on the
former. Could this be politicians and accountants double-talk?
It was further suggested today that despite the popularity of
GPS-World, www.pnt.org (a US government web site) was likely a more
reliable source of information. So, don't throw out all your Austron
2100's yet - all is not yet lost!
Regards,
Peter Vince (London, England)
(Can I just clarify: the opinions above are mine, obtained from the
floor of the meeting today, and don't represent the official view of
NPL!)
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.
