20 December 2010
R&RNAV attended the very successful meeting of the European eLoran Forum (EEF) held in Moscow on 24th and 25th November 2010, kindly hosted by the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade. The meeting convened with representatives of the Czech Republic, France, Norway, the Russian Federation and the UK to discuss the status and progress with (e)Loran and (e)Chayka in Europe. Notwithstanding the US termination of its Loran-C services in 2010 and the continued governmental review of the future of Loran in the UK, the European Loran system was reported to have been – and continues - operating with high availability, including the UK transmissions from Anthorn in Cumbria.
The UK presented an overview of the R&RNAV research activities for key elements of eLoran, including the effectiveness of Additional Secondary Factors (ASF) measurements for maritime navigation in the challenging archipelago of the Orkney Islands and the consistent achievement of 10m to 20m accuracy (95%) when combined with local Differential Loran (DLoran) propagation delay corrections.
A key theme of the meeting was to help evolve the plan and technical steps required to enable full compatibility and interoperability between European Loran and Russian Chayka, with the aim of demonstrating the initial operation of the Russian Tumanny Chayka station with the European Loran system, with a target date of 2013. This is an exciting initiative that may be facilitated by the advanced synchronisation technology that underpins the eLoran and eChayka systems of the future. The establishment of an operational Chayka / Loran system builds towards a back-up system for vulnerable GNSS that together would provide resilient Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) for maritime navigation of the High North Arctic shipping route. The High North route is expected become economically very attractive for global shipping as the polar ice gradually recedes and it could eventually become navigable all year round.
