Signals Analysis of MH370

We have a special meeting forthcoming on 8th June (election day).

Venue: Palmer Building, Reading University, Lecture Theatre 109.

Use Shinfield Road entrance to campus. Post Code RG6 6UR.

Alan Schuster Bruce from Inmarsat will give a talk entitled “Signals
Analysis of MH370”.

He will talk about the innovative methods used in the analysis of
satellite radio signals from Malaysian Airlines MH370 to determine its flight path.

The disappearance of flight MH370 just over three years ago, you may recall, was an event of global significance. I personally was proud to see a UK company immediately leading the world in science and technology with heroic efforts to explain what happened. And particularly to see radio communications being “front and centre”.

It is a real privilege for us to be able to host this meeting.

It’s fine to bring guests but please let me know if you intend to do so
and how many.

Parking permits are not required on site. The closest car park to Palmer is Car Park 4.  Please see Whiteknights campus map and keys 2016 (1)

73

John
G4RDC

Thursday 11th May meeting: Emergency Services Communications – a perspective from recent history

Folks,

Peter Butcher is with us on Thursday 11th May for the next club meeting.
Venue: Woodford Park, Woodley as usual.

In his own words:

“Communications between the Emergency Services, Police, Fire and
Ambulance have always been a problem. Complete inter-operability has been an elusive goal since the 1960s, so what has changed?
Three disasters; The East Coast Floods, the Isle of Wight Air Crash and Lockerbie prompted the Home office to take action and a set of
frequencies was allocated for the Emergency Services to allow
inter-operable communications. Planning rules were established and the question arose as to how many radio sites would be needed for a network to cover England and Wales.

A contract was awarded to Racal Radio in 1993 to calculate that number and I worked on that report as a Consultant, having recently retired from the Racal Radio Group.

The paper describes that work in detail, showing how time consuming and difficult propagation predictions were in those days and how two
different methods; manual calculation and early computer-aided
prediction gave sensibly the same results.
How that information was used and where we are now gives an interesting insight to government. After some long winded correspondence, the Home Office gave me permission to re-publish my historic report and added their version of today’s position.
Basically this paper is an historic archive of how things were and how
much, or little, things have changed!
Peter Butcher.
April 2017”

A big thankyou to George M0GXB for helping organise this one.

Refreshments to be served – or perhaps more accurately to be made
available. Audience participation may be required to make them happen.
There will be many, many biscuits. Some of them in date.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

73

John
G4RDC