NAVWORLD QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER

THE NAVIGATOR

WINTER SOLSTICE ISSUE DECEMBER 22, 2003

SEASONS GREETINGS

2004 National Technical Meeting
January 26-28, 2004 - San Diego, California

C-130 DOING CARRIIER LANDINGS

Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer

Ivan A. Getting, a physicist and electrical engineer who envisioned and then pushed for the development of today's ubiquitous Global Positioning System, has died. He was 91.

Getting, who was also the founding president of El Segundo-based Aerospace Corp., died in his sleep Oct. 11 at his home in Coronado, Calif. No exact cause of death was announced by the family. During World War II, Getting directed the Division of Fire Control and Army Radar at MIT; his group developed the microwave tracking radar that was credited with destroying 95% of the V-1 cruise bombs used by Germany against England. He later worked on anti-aircraft gun technology and ballistic missile and space launch systems.

His work earned him dozens of major awards. His achievements were capped in February when Getting was named a co-recipient of the National Academy of Engineering's $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize. The Draper prize is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineering and has been given to developers of microchips, jet engines and the Internet.

"His life was just one great accomplishment after another," said George Paulikas, a physicist who worked with Getting at Aerospace Corp. for three decades.

GPS, now an everyday tool for hikers and drivers, as well as the military, is considered the most important achievement in navigation in the 20th century. "It's had such a profound effect on the world at large, one has to conclude it's a remarkable engineering achievement," said Bob Evans, an engineer and venture capitalist in Menlo Park who headed the committee that granted the Draper award just nine months before Getting's death.

"We're very glad we gave it to him," Evans said. "There was some concern on the timing, because he was getting very old."

Getting conceived the idea for GPS after years of work on Air Force guidance and navigation systems.

"As far as GPS is concerned, he got it first," said Brad Parkinson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University and the co-recipient of the Draper award for his role in building the GPS system used today.

Parkinson, who was an Air Force colonel at the time, led a group of engineers who designed and put into operation the constellation of GPS satellites that orbit the planet and calculate positions on Earth with precision. But the team faced vociferous critics and several attempts to have the project canceled, Parkinson said.

It was Getting — an aerospace veteran who was widely respected for his technical expertise, integrity and leadership skills — who ushered the program through. "Without his advocacy, GPS would have been impossible," Parkinson said.

The first GPS satellites were launched in 1978 and the system became fully operational by 1993. By 2000, it had become a relatively inexpensive tool used by hikers and boaters. GPS is used in automated farm tractors and many other commercial applications.

Getting was an avid user of the technology himself and had GPS antennae installed on his roof.

"He was not only an inventor, he used it as a hobby," Paulikas said.

From 1960 until his retirement in 1977, Getting served as president of Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit corporation that provides research and development services for the Department of Defense and other government agencies, focusing on space and missile systems. Previously, he was a vice president for research and engineering at Raytheon Co., where he was responsible for the development of the Sparrow III and Hawk missile systems.

"It's really the passing of an era," Parkinson said. "One of the giants is gone."

Getting, who pronounced his first name "Ee-von," was known for his gregarious personality and piano playing during parties, said Paulikas, who added that Getting had been "sharp as a tack until the end."

Getting was born in New York City in 1912, reared in Pittsburgh and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford University.

He is survived by his wife, Helen; daughter Nancy G. Secker of Green Bay, Wis.; sons Ivan C. Getting of Boulder, Colo., Peter A. Getting of Iowa City, Iowa; and several grandchildren.

REQUIEM FOR THE HUMAN FLIGHT NAVIGATOR

A nostalgic tale of how aerial navigation once a human endeavor entered into an age of black boxes and knob twisting .

Captain Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail around the world. He used the lunar distance method (for longitude) and latitude sailing.

Dr. Jerry Lipman a Northrop Grumman scientist and friend brought to my attention a projection he found in a book on complex variables. Visualize a map projection from the North Pole upon a plane through the equator.

This projection results from rays emanating from the North Pole and passing through all geographical features. The plot will show northerly latitudes projected on the equatorial plane outside the equator with the innermost at 0 degrees latitude on the equator and outermost from the North Pole projected to infinity and generating a circle for all azimuths. The plot of the southerly latitudes would all plot within the equator inner bounds of the equatorial plane with the South Pole plotting in the center.

Soon after this projection was conveyed to me by Lipman, I discovered the same concept in a book Experiments in Topology by Stephen Barr. The author illustrated this projection in the section on Mapping. A hollow hemisphere was used with equator upward and in its center was the ray generator sending rays horizontally to infinity in all directions and the rays tilted through the lower latitudes in ever decreasing circles upon a flat surface. Then the hemisphere was inverted the hemisphere with the North Pole projected to infinity and the rays again painted ever decreasing concentric circles as the rays tilted downward. Through the lower latitudes.

Jail and electronic monitoring have long been the two options for federal defendants considered flight risks or dangers to the community, but new technology is providing another option.

Satellite tracking utilizing global position system technology allows U.S. Pretrial Services Officers in Nevada to track their charges 24 hours a day.

"This gives us another tool to use," said Jim Marsh, pretrial services chief for Nevada. "Maybe we have someone who needs to be supervised a little more than what we can do with electronic monitoring, but might not need to be in jail.

"The GPS allows us to have another level of supervision we can use."

Pretrial officers are responsible for interviewing defendants and making recommendations to judges about whether or not defendants should be supervised pending trial or freed on a personal recognizance bond. Supervision can range from checks by pretrial officers, to electronic monitoring, GPS monitoring or jail.

The new GPS system, which includes an ankle transmitter and a 5-inch by 5-inch tracking unit that clips to the defendant's belt, has already been used in two cases in Reno and is available in Las Vegas.

"He was let out of the house to go to church, but he ended up driving all around Reno," said Jim Kingera, a pretrial supervisor. "We knew where his church was, and when we looked at the record of where he went it was clear he didn't go there."

The system utilizes an ankle bracelet to send a signal representing the defendant, and the tracking unit links to a satellite to track the defendant's movements. When the defendant returns home the tracking unit is placed in a charger that downloads the information to ProTech Monitoring Inc., where the data is streamed to pretrial services computers in Las Vegas.

Areas that are off-limits to defendants can be programmed into the system, and if the defendant enters one of these zones the system can record it, Marsh said.

"If there has been a violation where a defendant goes into a zone we have made off-limits we get an e-mail," Marsh said. "Then we can go into the computer and pull up the map and see exactly where the defendant went."

The data can be broken down to street-level and can pinpoint the defendant to within 150 feet. It records how long the defendant is at locations, and even the speed he or she is traveling.

"The advantage to us is that this tells us exactly where they've been," Marsh said. "With electronic monitoring we give them a window to go to work or something, but we don't know where they went during that window."

Accused pedophiles and bank robbers might be good candidates for GPS because of the ability to program in the exclusionary zones, said Terry Wheaton, an electronic monitoring specialist with pretrial services.

"If you have someone you don't want to go near schools, you can program a route that gets them to work but doesn't go near schools," Wheaton said.

If the defendant were to go off the route it would be considered a violation and the defendant would likely end up in jail. Trying to remove the monitoring equipment or tampering with it is also a violation, Marsh said.

"We're going into this with a zero-tolerance attitude," Marsh said. "If these people don't do what they're supposed to do they go back to jail.

"These are people accused of serious crimes, and we're not going to be foolish about this."

The system will be recommended to judges by pretrial services on a case-by-case basis.

"It definitely gives us more flexibility, and it's a tool I'm hopeful can increase the number of releases prior to trial," Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman said. "There's a lot of rehab that can occur before trial."

U.S. Marshal supervisor Fidencio Rivera said house arrest in general "saves money because of the cost of incarceration, and also in the costs of transporting prisoners for medical care. If the person is not incarcerated they can get their own medical care."

The computer software, tracking units and chargers cost about $1,600 per set, about twice the price of electronic monitoring equipment, and the cost per day is more expensive for the GPS system, but it still saves taxpayers money, Rivera said.

About 450 federal defendants are jailed in Nevada on any given day at an average cost of $70 per inmate per day. In contrast electronic monitoring costs about $3 a day per defendant, and GPS about $4 a day.

There is also an active GPS system that records defendant movements and instantaneously transmits the data. That costs $10 a day. Currently authorities in Nevada are using only the passive system that downloads information from a charger at the defendant's home, but can go to an active system if a case calls for it.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL

My wife and I attended the 2^nd Annual Hall of Fame Dinner Dance sponsored by the Theodore Roosevelt High School Alumni Foundation (East Los Angeles) at the Quiet Cannon Country Club in Montebello, CA Sunday September 28, 2003. They were honoring Paul Bannai, first Japanese American California Assemblyman, Art Aragon, the original Golden Boy of boxing fame, Edward Roybal, United States Congressman (Retired), Harry Pregerson, Federal Judge 9^th Circuit of Appeals and Lou Adler, Award Winning Film & Music Producer. I knew both Judge Pregerson who was my Big Brothers camp counselor in 1941 and Art Aragon who was in my graduating Class of 1945.

I met and spoke to Terry Waters of the Class of 1938 and we had a very lively discussion on science. He invented the use of the hyperboloidal structure for building hyperboloidal antennas and other applications. He found that the hyperboloidal structure gives maximum earthquake and hurricane bracing by transforming eccentric tension, torsion and shear stresses automatically into axial compression stresses by geometric configuration of the structure. You can see the Hyperboloidal Earthshape at the Navworlds link at this site.

MARILYN AND THE EQUINOX (when the length of day and night are equal)

Marilyn of Parade magazine grappled with the effects leading to an earlier equinox in the spring and a later equinox in the fall in answering a query from a reader. She failed to recognize the height of the observer as a third effect.

Marilyn:

In your Parade column today (October 5, 2003) you offered the following elements for the apparent equinox occurring earlier in spring and later in fall than the actual equinox as the effects of: 1) semi-diameter of the sun and 2) refraction of the sun that extends the length of daylight. You left out: 3) the height of the observer. As you recall in an earlier column in an answer to a reader as to how far away can one see the horizon, you provided an approximate number. The rule of thumb is approximately the square root of the height (in ft.) of the observer above sea level expressed in nautical miles multiplied by 1.15. Thus an observer six foot in height can see his horizon extended about 2.8 nautical miles. This allows for an earlier sunrise as well.

Joe Portney

navworld.com

LEWIS AND CLARK

How good was their navigation? They never knew their longitude despite the fact that they had a quality chronometer. Land navigators of that era couldn’t rely on the error rate calibrated at departure to remain reasonably constant because of the vagaries of temperature, pressure and transport shock that the chronometer was exposed to in the absence of a gimbaled enclosed environment. But if they did a daily meridianal transit of the sun (double altitude method) they could compare their time derived to the expected change in the daily equation of time. None of the data that they recorded for longitude determination by taking lunar distances observations was successfully reduced at West Point following the expedition. 

THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

THE WORLDS OF DAVID DARLING

ANDY ROONEY AND THE NORDEN BOMBSIGHT

Eugene Townsend's nose art

CELESTAIRE celestaire.com

I had earlier bought a cardboard sextant from Celestaire and received their current 2004 catalog early in October. It is chockfull of interesting navigational equipment. They have made immense strides since their founding in 1972 becoming the world’s largest suppliers of sextants both marine and aircraft with a wide array of navigational instruments and support equipment. The company is located in Wichita, KS an early capital of light aircraft manufacturing. Visit their site at celestaire.com to enjoy a tour of navigational equipment currently available.