In the great British tradition of "rob someone's house then leave your mobile at the scene", two London men have been jailed for burglary after the satnav system in the vehicle used for the blags stored the addresses of every house they hit.

Ian Bansie, 33, used his work's motor to ferry 31-year-old accomplice Steve Warrington to ten homes in Reigate, Surrey, completely unaware that the satellite navigation system was dutifully keeping a record of their crime spree.

Bansie will now spend the next 32 months in a place where satnav is of limited used - at Her Majesty's Pleasure - after Guildford Crown Court jailed both him and Warrington, the latter for an immobilising four years. ®

Satnav fingers bungling burglars

he US aviation regulator has selected ITT Corp to provide a new generation of GPS satnav-based air traffic control equipment, awarding a $207m, three-year initial contract.

Current air traffic control systems worldwide use radar to detect and track aircraft: either "primary," in which radio pulses from the radar reflect back from the plane's skin, or "secondary," where a transponder emits a code or "squawk" in response to the radar transmission.

In either case, the controller's picture updates only as fast as the radar antenna can spin round, which typically means every six seconds or so. During that time a jet can travel a mile, and usually the radar location info isn't very precise either, which means that, in congested airspace, a substantial margin of error must be maintained. This in turn means fewer planes can move through a given amount of airspace, leading to delays.

Now, however, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) intends to move to a system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), which will lay the groundwork for the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen.

Under ADS-B, each plane is fitted with GPS satellite navigation, and thus knows its own location precisely. This information will then be broadcast in real time to a ground network, updating every second. Controllers will have a much more accurate idea where all the aircraft are, which could potentially allow them to move planes through bottlenecks more quickly.

“This signals a new era of air traffic control,” according to FAA number-two, Bobby Sturgell. “ADS-B - and, in turn, NextGen - will attack the delay problem head on by dramatically increasing air traffic efficiency.”

ADS-B will also be a two-way street, allowing pilots to see full information on all the planes in the sky around them, just as controllers do. At the moment, most aircraft don't have a proper radar of their own, though they may have proximity warning systems or weather radars. For monitoring other planes, today's pilots are mostly dependent on ground controllers - or the limited capabilities of the naked eye.

US in move towards GPS-based air traffic control

geoHist is a (relatively) simple program I wrote to log GPS data retrieved from GPSD into a
MySQL database. It is designed to meet the following requirements:

* Standalone
* Run from system startup to shutdown
* Small/fast, non-intrusive
* Robust
* Log data to an SQL database

Description

geoHist will poll GPSD every 10 seconds and then send that data to a
preconfigured MySQL database. It will attempt to detect if you are standing
still, and if you are then it will NOT log the data. It decides this using a
simple drift factor. It will always log position to the database at least
once if there is a satellite fix.

I designed geoHist to be used with my linux-based car computer. It is designed
to be configured once, and never touched again (except to export data).
System Requirements

* GPSD (http://gpsd.berlios.de)
* A GPS device that works with GPSD
* MySQL (http://www.mysql.com)

Anyone want to help me write a program to pull the data out of the DB?

geoHist - standalone GPSD MySQL Logging Daemon

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lose-up, ground-level imagery of US military sites posed a "potential threat" to security, it said.

The move follows the discovery of images of the Fort Sam Houston army base in Texas on Google Maps.

A Google spokesman said that where the US military had expressed concerns, images had been removed.

Google has now been barred from filming and conducting detailed studies of bases, following the discovery of detailed, three-dimensional panoramas online - and in particular, views of the Texan base.

While [Google Earth] is a very useful tool, there has to be a balance
Gary Ross
US military spokesman

"Images include 360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas," said the defence department in a statement quoted by AFP news agency.

It said such detailed mapping could pose a threat.

Google spokesman Larry Yu said the decision by a Google team to enter the Texas base and undertake a detailed survey, had been "a mistake".

He told the BBC News website that detailed study of such sensitive sites was not Google policy.

"In this case, it was imagery offered on Street View that caused the concern."

grumble grumble

Pentagon bans Google map-makers

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At least 54 people were killed and hundreds injured Tuesday and Wednesday by dozens of tornadoes that plowed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama in the nation's deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years. In spite of the disasters, state and local emergency management officials once again discovered that they could call on Amateur Radio operators to help out and get communications up and going again after the infrastructure failed.

According to ARRL Southeastern Division Director Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, "Four people were killed in Alabama as the storms damaged homes, caused flooding and downed trees and power lines. North Alabama SKYWARN, ARES and scores of Amateur Radio operators were up all night long, providing vital communications to the National Weather Service and Emergency Management Agencies all across the region. Once again, Amateur Radio operators played a critical role before, during and after the storms. I am proud of the level of professionalism and critical information that these operators provided our served agencies."

Hundreds of houses were damaged or destroyed across the region. Authorities had no immediate cost estimate of the damage. The storms flattened entire streets, smashed warehouses and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber. Some looked like life-size dollhouses, their walls sheared away. Crews going door-to-door to search for bodies had to contend with downed power lines, snapped trees and flipped-over cars. Near hard-hit Lafayette, Tennessee, cattle wandered through the debris. At least 12 people died in and around the town; more than 30 were killed in Tennessee alone.

Amateurs Lend a Hand as Deadly Storms Sweep across Southern United States

* Los Angeles County Hams Honored for Community Service: On February 27, members of the Disaster Communications Service (DCS), based at the Carson Sheriff Station, received individual and group awards from the State of California, the County of Los Angeles, the Carson Sheriff Station Support Foundation and the City of Carson, California for their participation in a wide range of both planned and emergent events. These 27 Amateur Radio operators provided almost 8000 hours of service to the agencies, including assisting in providing assistance during a bicycle race, tactical alerts due to civil unrest, funerals for fallen deputy sheriffs and the fires that plagued Southern California. Members of their Rapid Deployment Team spent five days on Catalina Island, serving as the primary means of communication between the island and the mainland until telephone systems were restored. The service provided by the Carson Station DCS volunteers saved the taxpayers of Los Angeles County almost $320,000, "but more importantly, they selflessly provided an invaluable service that is a critical component to the safety of our communities and families," the DCS coordinator said. Thirteen deputies, a firefighter, two station volunteers and two citizens were also recognized in the second annual event that pays tribute to Carson sheriff's deputies and supporters for their work in the city. More information can be found at the Los Angeles County Disaster Communications Web page .

Los Angeles County Hams Honored for Community Service

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) called Army Military Affiliate
Radio System (MARS) into action as tornados swept across the Southeastern United
States February 5-6. According to Army MARS Chief Stuart Carter, "For the
first time as far back as we can remember, a state government called for MARS
deployment in response to an actual emergency. The resulting teamwork and use of
Army MARS Winlink capability gave TEMA its only e-mail link during President
Bush's visit to the storm-stricken area." At least 70 messages were sent
during the state operation ranging from casualty figure updates and signal
reports to staff rosters and photos.

TEMA's Chief of Communications David Wolfe, WA4VVX (MARS call sign AAR4CY),
said, "Although there was no commercial power at the deployment site,
TEMA's communications infrastructure was fully operational. Both the VHF high
band and 800 MHz repeater systems had good coverage for voice command and
control. Our shortage was Internet connectivity, and our unmet needs were e-mail
and the ability to send pictures. MARS Winlink provided exactly what was not
available by any other means."

Carter said that this event illustrates the importance of detailed preparation
and training that has taken place during realistic disaster response exercises
over the past several years. "In the case of Tennessee, the story goes back
a year and a half. Steve Waterman, K4CJX (MARS call sign AAA9AC) began working
with Wolfe in late 2006, preparing for just such a deployment. At the time, Army
MARS was just beginning to adopt the Winlink 2000 radio e-mail network system,
and with the assistance of the then-Tennessee State Director Paul Drothler, WO4U
(MARS call sign AAV4DJ), Army MARS had just signed a Memorandum of Understanding
with TEMA. This MOU just served to strengthen an already strong relationship
between TEMA and Army MARS. Wolfe led TEMA staffers who were already hams to
becoming MARS members and to become qualified MARS Winlink 2000 operators. The
rest of Wolfe's team soon obtained their Amateur Radio and Army MARS
licenses."

The next step, according to Carter, was joint training for TEMA staff and
Tennessee Army MARS members. Some was classroom training followed up with
extensive field training. The culmination of the field training was TNCAT07, a
massive exercise that included the Central United States Earthquake Consortium
(CUSEC), an eight-state alert consortium along the New Madrid fault line. This
exercise also included the participation by ARRL Amateur Emergency Radio Service
(ARES), Civil Air Patrol and other EmComm services that clearly demonstrated
interoperability between TEMA, Tennessee Army MARS, the Amateur Radio community
and other municipal communications services.

"To make a long story short," Carter said, "we now have seen a
demonstration of seamless collaboration between Army MARS and one of our
supported agencies under 'Real World' emergency conditions. This was the first
Army MARS deployment since the Katrina/Rita disasters two years ago.
Successfully meeting the challenge involved deployment readiness on the part of
our members, and it required total Winlink 2000 mobility. First of all came the
building of relationships with existing and potential customers, and then came
meticulous training of state and federal staffers, and frequent exercising at
home and in the field. With this pattern of established collaboration between
our customers and MARS members, we enter the new era of Army MARS Emergency
communications support."

TENNESSEE AGENCY CALLS ARMY MARS INTO ACTION

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The Long Shot