I have just spoken this morning to my friend at Trinity House who is their top man in GPS and all Radio navigation systems. He informed me that the USA will not be getting rid of Loran C as it would be completely ridiculous to leave people without a suitable system to navigate by. At present the Loran C is only operative in the Northern hemisphere but they are working on the rest of the world. The problem would be that as it stands, people are far too reliant on GPS that can fail and has failed. Then we are left with Celestial navigation and there are very few people in this world now who have ever trained in it, let alone know what a sextant is. It would cause a lot of fatalities and we do not of course, have the old Decca Navigator anymore either. The systems are being uprated but will be far safer for navigation as they are land based power transmissions, that have easily transferable safety equipment for a power failure. I will get back to you very shortly with a better and more inclusive answer for the shipmates.
