Airservices Australia has announced it’ll be conducting inspections and upgrades of navigation aids throughout this month.
The Airservices Flight Inspection Service (FIS) team will be visiting urban and regional areas of the country throughout November checking navigation aids and continuing to upgrade non-directional beacons (NDBs) to improve safety.
Airservices says the checks of critical air navigation equipment maximise safety at regional and major airports, aerodromes and airstrips.
The inspection service will carry out 47 individual routine or special flight inspections on equipment at:
- QLD: Richmond, Hughenden, Townsville, Cairns, Proserpine, Maryborough, Thargomindah, Kilcoy, Emerald, Clermont;
- NSW: Sydney, Orange, Wagga, Cowra;
- ACT: Canberra, Church Creek;
- VIC: Melbourne, Epping, Plenty, Bolinda;
- TAS: Hobart, Launceston, Devonport, King Island, Smithton, Nile, Tea Tree, Strahan; and
- WA: Karratha, Christmas Island, Cocos Island.
As well as NDBs, navigational aids to be tested include instrument landing systems (ILS), distance measuring equipment (DME), and VHF omni range (VOR). Positional and navigational information is relayed from these aids to aircraft to support pilots with air navigation and airport arrivals.
The inspections will be performed by a specialist Airservices aircrew using a twin engine Beechcraft King Air and precision equipment to collect data. This data is then analysed by Airservices maintenance and engineering specialists to ensure each navigation aid is operating accurately.
Airservices technicians will also be on the ground in Meekatharra to recommission the NDB after its schedule outage and antenna transfer. They will then move to sites in Mount Magnet and Dubbo towards the end of the month.