02.01.2020: Another year starts, where potential trips to Australia might interfere again with my private flying. Last year I only flew 20 hours, a ridiculously low number for someone who owns his own plane. But I’ll do my best to change this in 2020.
13.01.2020: I flew to Berlin this morning to prepare the kickoff meeting of the CLUG project (Certifiable Localisation Unit with GNSS), which will take place in two days in Prague. CLUG is a Horizon 2020 funded research project launched by GSA, the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (they are the ones responsible for Galileo, EGNOS etc.). A description of the project can be found on their website under https://www.gsa.europa.eu/certifiable-localisation-unit-gnss-railway-environment. The project is led by SNCF, the French National Railway Company.
We just finished an earlier Horizon 2020 funded project called STARS (Satellite Technology for Advanced Railway Signalling) (http://www.stars-rail.eu/), of which I was the initiator and technical coordinator. In that project the main focus was to investigate the raw performance of GNSS in the railway environment, to identify the main environmental effects which degrade GNSS performance and to quantify these effects. For that purpose we equipped three trains in the Czech Republic, Italy and Switzerland with measurement equipment, collected GNSS raw data which we then analysis. We also developed algorithms to detect the presence of degrading effects in the raw data stream, which might be used to develop GNSS receivers specifically adopted to the railway environment.
The goal of the CLUG project is to investigate the fusion of GNSS with other sensor, such as inertial measurement units, gyroscopes, radars etc. A more detailed description of the project can be found on the website of SNCF under https://tech.sncf.com/en/clug-project/.
Below a picture of Zurich airport taken during takeoff roll.
I like these early morning flights, as you have often spectacular sights on the Alps, as the one below.
En route we had a great view of the moon, which was exceptionally bright thanks to the cold air.
We overflew the new airport of Berlin which shall finally open this year. I really wonder whether I will have the chance to fly there in 2020, I wouldn’t bet on it.
15.01.2020: Today the kickoff of the CLUG Project took place at the GSA headquarter in Prague. I took the train from Berlin to Prague yesterday, that’s nearly as fast as taking the plane when counting door to door time.
We could hold the kickoff meeting in their nice big meeting room, which has a ceiling that gives you the impression of sitting outside under a night syk.
22.01.2020: The World Economic Forum is taking place these days in Davos, and this year Donald Trump has attended again. He flew in on Air Force One, but actually both planes serving that role arrived together, probably to have a fallback in case one has a problem. Today they left Zurich again, I could not go there to watch them leaving, but I had a look at the life coverage of the departure on my computer in the office, listening to the ATC communication in parallel. So the picture below was taken with my mobile phone from the PC screen.
