Altitude Reporting on the ATCRBS---An Iinpatient Appraisal

The airline industry, continuing its support for the development and implementation of the ATC radar beacon system, now strongly endorses the use of automatic altitude reporting. In discussing the pitfalls which have delayed implementation of the basic ATC radar beacon system, this paper calls attention to the need for automatic altitude reporting in the ATC system, and the need to provide it quickly. In describing the need for automatic altitude information for both en route and terminal ATC, the choice of an altitude-interrogation mode, the 100-foot-altitude reporting increment, and the flexible code structure being proposed which is intended to cover all significant altitude strata to provide both coarse-grain and fine-grain information as required, are discussed. The paper also describes both early and recent actions by the airline industry in the field of secondary radar.