Imotorhome Australia - June 2018

22 | News

MEDAL MYSTERY

S

outh Australian Rodney Elson came

across a First World War medal when

he began dismantling a vintage 12ft

Rowvan for spare parts. An inscription names

Corporal Robert John Bowshire of the 28th

Australian Infantry Battalion (Service Number

5124). Records show that Corporal Bowshire

enlisted in March 1916 and returned to

Australia in July 1919. His battalion fought its

first major battle at Pozieres between 28 July

and 6 August 1916 and played a supporting

role in many others. It was disbanded in 1919.

Mr Elson, of Arno Bay, is now attempting to

track down the soldier’s family so the medal

can be returned to its rightful place. If you can

help, give him a call on 0478 132 142.

AUSTRALIAN GPS ACCURACY

IMPROVEMENTS

I

n case you haven’t noticed, the little blue

marker showing where you are in Google

or Apple Maps, isn’t as accurate as it could

be. That’s why Australia is spending over

$260 million on satellite infrastructure and

technology to improve GPS accuracy, as part

of the Federal Government’s recent budget. As

it stands, we get uncorrected GPS signals that

are accurate to five metres.

To improve that, the majority of the funds will

be invested in a Satellite Based Augmentation

System (SBAS), which aims to correct GPS

accuracy to around a metre, across Australia

and our maritime zone.

SBAS, which originates in the aviation industry,

uses space-based and ground-based

infrastructure to remove external errors in a

GPS signal.

The technology has already been implemented

in the U.S., Europe, China, Russia, India and

Japan, but an 18-month test began in Australia

last June.

“It’s like a first level autocorrect,” explained

Philip Collier, research director at Australia’s

Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial

Information. “It’s relatively easy to achieve that

level of accuracy with an appropriate correction

signal, but to move to [an accuracy level] that’s

better than 10 cm, it’s a much more difficult

problem”.

That’s where $64 million of the allocated

funds will go. It’ll be invested into the National

Positioning Infrastructure Capability (NPIC), to

improve accuracy to the sub-decimetre – that’s

less than 10 cm – by improving on-ground

infrastructure and data processing models.

“We’re very excited by it,” Collier spoke of the

overall announcement. “We’ve been advocating

for this sort of investment to improve

positioning for Australia for many years. To see

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