As with so many meetings this year the THUCC met on-line via Webex. This was a new one to me, having spent many hours this year in on-line meetings using Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. However, all produced the same poor quality that I have now come to expect, a quality that as a retired professional photographer I deplore.

Following the retirement of Capt. Roger Barker as Director of Navigational Requirements the meeting was conducted by his replacement Commander Nigel Hare. Commander Hare introduced himself, a former RN Officer and QHM at Portsmouth; a round robin of introductions then followed. Interestingly there seemed to have been an increase in the attendance by those mostly interested in small craft. Apart from me there were Robin Baron from the Cruising Association, Robert Merrylees from the RNSA and Stuart Caruthers of the RYA.

Commander Hare informed the meeting that where possible Trinity House staff had been working from home during the Corona virus problem, both on the Statutory and Charity sides of the organization. The Inspection and Navigation teams had continued working with the three vessels, but in the longer term with the possibility of further restrictions, visits and engineering would become more problematic. Trinity House has not had to respond to any major incident recently. However, the proposed extension to the Thanet Windfarm has failed to receive consent, a win for the safety of navigation.

Moving on to significant events since the previous meeting, one must be the cessation of the GLAs’ Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS), introduced during the era of selective availability. The thinking, confirmed by consultation, is that today’s signals and receivers are able to meet all but the most stringent accuracy requirements. Consequently, the DGPS signals will cease to be transmitted on 31 March 2022. Many other countries have already shut down their systems.

The work to modernize Portland Bill Lighthouse is nearing completion, new lanterns having been fitted, and is undergoing assessment by the engineers before being handed back to the operations department. The lantern has a nominal range of 18 NM and the hazard-warning signal has been retained with a range of 1 NM. These hazard-warning signals, which used to be called fog signals, are becoming more of a problem as local residents resent them when they sound.

At this stage I became aware that all was not well with Webex when I was left looking at a picture of Portland Bill lighthouse although the discussion on sound had moved on. Next I had a message on screen to say that I had been disconnected and the system was attempting to re-connect me. By the time it managed this I had missed a chunk of the meeting. Happily, though, the documentation supplied in advance of the meeting shows what I had missed. The modernization of Trwyn Du and Lundy North lighthouses has commenced, but the Covid-19 pandemic is restricting this. The design phase has commenced for the modernization of both the Tater Du and St. Catherine’s lighthouses.

The deficiency rates in local harbour navigation marks inspected by TH has fallen slightly, but that for offshore structures had increased. Of 414 active AtoN relating to 34 Offshore renewable sites 307 were inspected with 53 found to be defective. However, the inspections were limited due to Storms Brendan Ciara and Dennis preventing the vessels undertaking more. As of September 2020 there are 33 operational windfarms in the coastal waters around England and Wales with 2,134 turbines. A further 264 turbines are under construction at two offshore windfarms, with 350 at four windfarms in the pre-planning stage. Three offshore windfarms have consent for 549 turbines, but are waiting for the next round of Government funding, and a further 16 windfarms, including extensions, are at the planning stage. If consented they will have in excess of 1,500 turbines. These seem mostly to be in Welsh waters, presumably English ones now reaching saturation. Trinity House is in consultation on all of these.

Martin Bransby from General Lighthouse Authority Research and Development (GRAD) then went through the things they are involved with. Resilient PNT, with GNSS being vulnerable to interference, led to trials on board TH vessels. GNSS has multiple uses on board with 13 counted in Galatea when she carried out tests. Under investigation is Absolute Radar Positioning where a transmitted radar pulse is received by an eRacon which then transmits its own Lat. and Long. to allow the ship to find its absolute position. Tests with this off Lowestoft and Southwold are able to determine position to 2.2 metres 95% of the time up to about 10 NM offshore.

By now I was back into the meeting. Research continues into the BinoNav system for taking bearings that are automatically plotted on the ECDIS. Before commercial production can take place GRAD is developing a method of automatically logging the results, which the MCA want for SAR purposes. Space based augmentation systems are being considered, especially as the UK in now excluded from Search and Rescue guarantees with the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS). There are currently six local augmentation systems worldwide and Martin believes that multi-system receivers will be possible. VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) is a VHF data exchange method, allowing the exchange of information between ships or between ship and shore. This will protect AIS from future overload.

Moving on to lights, Martin described means of measuring the brightness lights on AtoNs, in situ for lighthouses or in the laboratory for smaller lanterns that could be transported. They are also investigating the degradation of LEDs with age, something that I have never heard discussed before. Also described was a new ‘bomb’ LED light. This has double the number of LEDs as existing ones but uses the same current. This reduces the heat produced at the junctions by 39%, allowing the structure’s temperature to operate at 46˚C instead of 74˚C.

More on these GRAD works may be found in articles in Fairway from the past couple of years.
by John Hasselgren