Greeting from the President on the occasion of the
National Boating Federation’s 2001 Annual Meeting

Although I am unable to join you in person, it is my pleasure to have our Secretary, Robert Lilley, present you with greetings from the International Loran Association and to make a brief statement as to the status of loran both in the United States and Europe.

There is some very good news but this has to be modulated with the recognition of the continuing challenges facing the loran community. First the good news: As a direct result of strong bipartisan support in Congress, Loran-C is getting a major face lift using funds specifically appropriated for this purpose. New solid-state transmitters are to replace the old tube-type transmitters, and a complete upgrade of timing equipment will provide a substantial improvement to the loran service. At the same time, unattended transmitting station operation will result in a substantial reduction of operating costs.

Many of you will now be using GPS and reaping the benefit of the elimination of the Department of Defense Selective Availability. We have seen the accuracy of GPS improve by almost an order of magnitude from in excess of 100 meters to 10-20 meters. Many of you still use loran and are familiar with the repeatable accuracy that approaches the absolute accuracy of GPS but may wonder why we still require the loran service when GPS can provide superior performance. The answer is GPS availability and the vulnerability of the GPS service to interruption. A recent study conducted for the Department of Transportation by the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center identifies these GPS shortcomings, but because of the sensitivity of the study report it has been withheld from the public.

Loran and GPS make superb partners, not only to assure continuity of service but also to comply with the navigator’s fundamental rule of not being totally reliant upon a single system, especially one that has identified vulnerabilities. GPS can calibrate loran’s offset and provide similar accuracy to GPS. During a GPS outage loran acts as the flywheel and the systems used in concert provide the required redundancy.

However, there are challenges both in the United States and Europe. We do no have a loran policy to ensure loran longevity that is essential to give industry the confidence to make the investment to provide combined Loran-C/GPS receiving equipment. We are about to get a first class Loran-C service but without a supporting manufacturing, marketing and after sales service infrastructure. The NBF and user community can make a significant contribution to change this situation by supporting the provision of redundant systems and making their views known to Congress.

In Europe four of the Loran-C stations are transmitting differential GPS and GPS integrity using a data communications channel. Known as Eurofix, the International Telecommunication Union has recently adopted the specification for the data channel on a worldwide basis. But, as in the United States, Europe still lacks a coherent Loran-C policy.

In this brief statement it is not possible to cover the subject of precise time. Suffice it to say that redundancy in the provision of precise time is essential to United States national security.

The ILA welcomes anyone, business or individual, who can contribute to the promulgation of a long-term Loran-C policy.

I thank you for the opportunity to present this statement.

John M. Beukers, President, April 22, 2001