if thousands of pilots were gathering for three days of in-depth seminars, meetings, aircraft exhibits, shopping, live interviews, and social events, you would likely jump at the chance to be a part of it. That's exactly what's happening September 22, 23, and 24 in Hartford, Connecticut, for the 2011 AOPA Aviation Summit. Summit is a unique event on the aviation calendar every year for its focus on seminars, demonstration and shopping opportunities with exhibitors, and the number of industry experts. This year, AOPA has added opportunities for student pilots and new pilots that you won't want to miss. There will be seminars on passing a checkride, launching an aviation career, GPS operations, and more. The three-day event features 69 hours of seminar choices. Don't miss the annual CFI roundtable at the Marriott Conference Room 7 on Saturday. AOPA will also host a student pilot roundtable on Saturday. Come and talk about your flight training experience. For more information, visit the website (www.aopa.org/summit).
LightSquared blames ‘legacy’ GPS for interference
LightSquared, the company whose proposed mobile network has raised widespread concerns about interference with GPS signals relied on by aviation and other users, has responded to its critics with a report that said GPS receivers must do a better job of “rejecting” other signals.
In the report, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission after five months of analysis by a working group convened to study the problem, LightSquared acknowledged that its planned use of electromagnetic spectrum would “adversely affect a significant number” of “legacy GPS receivers.”
However, LightSquared disowned responsibility for the interference, arguing that the receivers’ designs were the cause of the problem.
“The reason for this is not because LightSquared would be improperly transmitting in the GPS band. Rather it is because legacy GPS receivers do not adequately reject transmissions from base stations operating in the adjacent frequency band because the GPS receivers have been deliberately or, sometimes, inadvertently, designed or manufactured with the assumption that there would be no adjacent-band terrestrial transmissions—ignoring regulations first adopted in 2003 that permit such transmissions,” it said in the report.
AOPA and many other industry groups continue to speak out against the proposal, saying it puts at risk billions of taxpayer dollars already spent by the federal government to develop the GPS-based Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen).
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