Traditionally, the duties of a lookout include maintaining situational awareness and providing warning of the risk of collision, stranding and other dangers to navigation. Therefore, in addition to the use of both eyesight and hearing, the effective use of available instruments and equipment are essential to the purpose of proper lookout; this applies particularly to radar. The aim of this paper is to emphasise the need for the correct practice and method of lookout.

Current crises in the air traffic industry demonstrate that changes are required to present systems. The levels of delay and poor safety standards being experienced around the world dictate the need for improved Air Navigation Services (ANS). A multitude of reasons explain these problems. For instance, fragmentation of national systems prevents optimum use of the world's airspace. In addition, inherent limitations of present ANS technologies and procedures mean that it is usually not possible to separate numerous aircraft on random routings. Thus, aircraft must often plan their flights along routes and be channelled so that the necessary separation can be maintained. This results in fuel and time penalties, in addition to airspace capacity being consequently constrained. Accordingly, this paper provides an analysis of changes that should occur to ANS during this decade by evaluating current and planned technologies and procedures.

The History of Air Navigation Group commissioned the author to provide a brief account of airborne DR development by discussing both the methods and the equipment used in the air. This second and final part covers the period after 1940 which saw the automation of DR techniques from the Air Position Indicator of the 1940s to the Flight Management Systems in current use.

One of the essentials of the Collision Regulations is that they should, so far as possible, eliminate doubt in the minds of navigators using them. In recent years, an amendment has introduced a serious, dangerous doubt.

I wrote a paper for this Journal called Fast Craft and Collision Regulations two years ago that was an attempt to highlight weaknesses in the current Colregs that had become apparent through the advent of large fast craft, mainly fast ferries. The paper offered possible amendments to the Colregs in order to correct the situation and bring some order to this increasingly complex situation. The matter of amendments to the Colregs was discussed at length right up to IMO sub-committee level, but amendment of the current Colregs was rejected largely because of the diversity of opinion about this subject. Without a consensus, it is difficult to effect change and with hindsight the proposals presented in my paper were too complex, and perhaps too far reaching. The purpose of this second paper is to propose a much simpler solution, one which takes into account current practice and which does not close the door to more defined action in the future.