New England Section of the Institute of Navigation
Announcement of the 31st Meeting
Monday, August 25, 2003 at the MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, MA


Presentations by Dr. Timothy Hall and Sigrid Close
Tour by Dennis Hall
MIT Haystack Observatory


On Monday August 25th, we will hold our thirty-first meeting at the
MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, MA. A short tour of the Haystack
Observatory by Dennis Hall will precede two short presentations.
Sigrid Close of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Boston University will
first present " Meteors." Dr. Timothy Hall of the MIT Lincoln
Laboratory will follow with "Radiolocation Using AM Broadcast
Signals." Please refer to the abstracts and speaker biographies at
the end of this announcement.

The meeting will begin at 7:15 PM with an optional dinner, including
beer and wine, at 6:00 PM for $20.00 (payable at the dinner). If you
would like to attend, please reply to George Koehler via e-mail
) or telephone (1-978-683-2087) by 4:00 pm August 20,
2003. Please indicate whether or not you would like to attend the
dinner and/or the meeting. The dinner includes: tossed garden salad,
fancy rolls with butter, chicken piccata and marinated steak tips,
rice pilaf, vegetable du jour, assorted miniature desserts, assorted
beverages. Cheese and crackers, and beer and wine will be served from
6:00-6:30. We must know by August 20th at the latest whether you
will be coming to the wine and cheese reception and the dinner. For
our section records, please indicate whether or not you are an ION
member. Since the Section's goals include increasing its knowledge
base and forming communications networks, attendance is not restricted
to ION members. For this particular meeting, MIT needs to be apprised
of who will be attending. Therefore, if you plan to attend, please
forward your citizenship in your reply.

For directions to MIT Haystack, please see
http://www.haystack.mit.edu/directions.html. The MIT Haystack
Observatory is located off Route 40, on the border of Groton,
Westford, and Tyngsboro. One way to get to Route 40 is to go north on
Route 3 from I-495. The MIT access road off Route 40 is about 5 miles
west of Route 3 and is clearly marked. Haystack is at the very end of
the road (1.5 miles up the road).


Tour of Haystack - Dennis Hall (30 min)

Dennis Hall has been a member of the technical staff at MIT Lincoln
Laboratory for more than 25 years. He is a member of the Institute of
Navigation and he flies helicopters in his spare time.


Meteors - Sigrid Close (20 min)

Sigrid Close received her MS in Physics from the University of Texas
at Austin. She is currently working on her PhD in Boston University's
Department of Astronomy as a Lincoln Scholars Fellow. Her talk will
discuss meteor observations collected with the ALTAIR UHF and VHF
radar located in the Marshall Islands on the Kwajalein Atoll.


Radiolocation Using AM Broadcast Signals – Dr. Timothy Hall (20 min)

Tim Hall is a member of the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory
in the Air Traffic Control Systems Group. He received a PhD in
Electrical Engineering from MIT. Tim will talk about navigating using
the signals from ordinary AM broadcast radio stations. He will
discuss the navigation algorithms used with these signals of
opportunity and present experimental positioning results.