Radar Upgrades Align for a Smoother, Safer National Airspace
The FAA’s True North Project introduces automation to respond to magnetic declination in radar system.
By Jim Tise, FAA
The FAA is in the midst of a major change to its air traffic control radars that will ensure the safety of the National Airspace System (NAS) while significantly cutting maintenance time and costs.
The True North project addresses the need to periodically realign radar settings due to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Until recently, FAA engineers realigned the equipment manually and on-site, but new research has provided a way to automate the process. These settings are vital to ensure pilots remain lined up with the correct runway heading when preparing to land.
Due to something called magnetic declination, the settings for radars — especially those located farther away from the North and South Poles — change over time. When the settings are off by more than three degrees, FAA technicians travel to the radar sites to realign radars to the new magnetic changes.
“When we reach that three-degree threshold, the radar is taken out of service immediately,” explained Julio Garcia-Laffitte, True North project lead. “At that point, the radar is telling airplanes they are someplace that they aren’t.”
In 2018, the FAA began to realign airport terminal radars to True North. Much like a television’s DVR resets automatically when Daylight Savings Time begins and ends, or the way a computer automatically adapts for time zone differences, FAA radars, through automation, adjust their settings when they are off by more than three degrees.
“They’ll do that via an adaptation build in the automation system and we don’t ever need to touch the radar again,” said Garcia-Laffitte.
No longer will FAA technicians have to travel to often-remote locations, shut down the radar — which complicates flight operations — and manually realign them when the magnetic declination threshold is exceeded.
“By going to True North we no longer have that expense,” said Garcia-Laffitte. “It’s another step towards the new evolution of NAS modernization. Less [labor] is required. There is increased safety. We go out there, we do it once, and we don’t ever have to do it again.”
Some 170 radars have been upgraded, with 64 more to go. The project is under budget and ahead of schedule so the anticipated completion date is by the end of 2023.
