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A SHARPER-AND SAFER-IMAGE

By Casey Miller |

BUSINESS Last summer Congress finally grasped what transportation safety experts have been saying for years-the nation’s antiquated air traffic radar systems need replacing, pronto. So Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to stan improving air traffic control systems at its five busiest airports, D/FW among them, by the end of 1992, or face a fine of 10 percent of each site’s allocated budget per month.

Enter Custom Simulation Solutions Corp. of Hurst. Armed with thousands of dollars in government study grants, the 3-year-old corporation is working overtime to complete a unique three-dimensional radar system.

According to president RALPH STATUM, the company has written a new computer language for a product that promises to provide 3-D images of the skies 135 times a minute. The sweep radar now used shows a 2-D picture 11 times a minute. That’s an awfully long time between sweeps when two airliners are coming at each other at 600 mph.

Custom Simulation also wants to incorporate into the system detailed satellite images of the earth every 28 days, an innovation that would render most pilot navigational maps obsolete and make the system extremely valuable for on-board computer navigation.

If all this works, pilots will be able to fly using 3-D computer imagery that can be updated to add new obstacles such as buildings. Airports will be able to reroute traffic lanes to get in more flights faster, boosting capacity by up to 35 percent. Air traffic controllers will see every flying object in the vicinity tracked automatically on a giant 3-D computer imagery screen.

And Custom Simulation Solutions Corp. will be rich beyond its wildest dreams, of course.

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