US Patent 7868785 Ownship symbol for enhanced situation awareness

A method of symbolically representing a location of an aircraft on a display in the aircraft is disclosed. It is determined whether the aircraft is operating proximal one of a runway and a taxi-way. A range of the display is selected. Features are displayed near a location of the aircraft on the display at a first scale that corresponds to the selected range. A first symbol representing a current location of the aircraft is displayed on the display at the first scale in solid form. A second symbol representing the current location of the aircraft is displayed on the display at a second scale in non-solid form when a size of the first symbol representing the aircraft at the first scale obscures the displayed features on the display. The size of the first symbol is smaller than a size of the second symbol.