Establishment and use of time unification system for civil aviation

Precise and fail proof operation of the various services used by civil aviation throughout the territory of the USSR depends largely on synchronization, the latter requiring periodic indication of time scales and involving the concept of time unification. The principal users of a time unification system are the traffic control service and the flight crew. Since 1974 electromechanical hand-and-dial clocks in airports have been gradually replaced with modern signal clocks. Installation of secondary clocks in control towers, time encoding in the secondary clocks, and interfacing the clock room with the computer of the appropriate automatic control system are improvements made in the control tower. Time indicating and time keeping equipment is also installed in airplanes for tie-in with airports by means of radio signals over metric wave or decametric-wave communication channels. The necessary short range radio navigation system with the inclusion of satellites for transmittal of unified time information from airports to airplanes and equipment characterized by satisfactory technical accuracy and high stability with means for automatic or semiautomatic time correction guaranteeing high reliability for a period of 10 years is produced.