Appendix C 



2000 Fax Chart Reception Project 



MST3 Jonathan Dale and LT Christopher Strong 



The International Ice Patrol strives to locate and track icebergs south of .'>2°N that may 

 pose a threat to North Atlantic mariners. Ice Patrol then provides the Limit of All Known Ice 

 (LAKI) to the mariner with the Daily Radiofacsimile (fax chart). This is broadcast from three 

 different locations around the North Atlantic on 10 different high frequencies. 



During the 2000 ice season the International Ice Patrol initiated the Fax Chart Reception 

 Project to determine the quality of the reception received by our primary customer, the North 

 Atlantic Mariner. In order to conduct the analysis the international Ice Patrol requested that 

 iTiariners send copies of HP's HF fax charts they received while underway. The copies were to be 

 annotated with the reception position, time, and frequency. While IIP monitors the accuracy and 

 quality of the HF fax chart at every transmission, the real goal of the project was to determine the 

 quality of the reception received by our primary customer, the mariner. The response from the 

 maritime community was good, and we received 195 different fax charts from 27 individual 

 vessels (Table 3). To analyze the results, the faxes were first sorted according to the quality of 

 reception. Then the position of receipt was plotted and the frequency of reception was noted. 



The position and frequency of reception for fax charts received covered an enormous area 

 from Germany to Puerto Rico. However, in order to focus our analysis efforts, IIP decided to 

 narrow the analysis down to a region more representative of our area of operations. The area that 

 we chose to examine extends north from 35°N to 59°N and west from 25°W to 65°W. As a result 

 our sample size was reduced by more than half as only 79 charts were received within this area. 

 Nonetheless, this represents a significant number of charts covering the major shipping routes in 

 the North Atlantic. 



The quality of reception analysis was conducted by binning the charts into five categories 

 shown in Figure I . In four of the five ( I through 4) categories the LAKI was readable, although 

 in Category 4 it was difficult. The fifth category was so poor that the information was incomplete 

 or entirely unreadable. Table I shows the number of fax charts in each reception group within the 

 analysis region. 



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