FAA redesigning airspace with satellite navigation over Denver Metroplex
By Randy Beaudette
There has been a lot of chatter lately about flight paths over Gilpin County. How the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to shift air traffic from Boulder County south over Gilpin. For a little background, in 1946 the FAA established the Vary-high Frequency Omnidirectional Range (VOR) system throughout the United States. VOR is a type ofshort-range radio navigation system for aircraft, enabling aircraft with a receiving unit to determine its position and stay on course by receiving radio signals transmitted by a network of fixed ground radio beacons or vectors. This is very much like “highways in the sky.” Gilpin County is bordered by two of these vectors, V356 over south Gilpin and V8 on the north side. Aircraft track V356 bound for the southwest USA, and V8 to points west of Gilpin. The FAA plans to decommission these ground-based stations in the future and replace it with a more accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) or NextGen navigation system.
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