Navigation at its finest hour.

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ghostflyer
Posts: 1390
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:06 am

Navigation at its finest hour.

Post by ghostflyer »

It was after a forum article written by one of our very learnered friends about a flight down to Rio that got me thinking how they would have navigated down there . Maps would have been very rudimentary or plan non accurate . Then one of the CFI,s in my area was getting all bent and twisted about some new aircraft not being fitted with a whisky compasses. I tried to have a deep and meaning full discussion with him on progress of navigation. It also explained when the authorities dropped the subject of knowing morse code. I tried to explain to him that early in the aviation world in the USA they used to paint big arrows on the ground with buildings having the name of the town on them. Then some genius came to realise that a compass and watch could help in navigation . Then we had these fangled radio beams called ADF. While ADF was good it had its restrictions . ADF stations were far and few in this country and lot of us used to use the local radio station . This gave us direction and the cricket scores. BUT due to our lack of populations some genius came to the idea of repeater stations but on the same frequency . Ok the aircraft ADF worked perfectly but you were simply lost and the Magnetic compasses didn’t work correctly often due to the large amounts of iron ore in the ground . Then was INS but extremely expensive . Tacan showed its face but wasn’t a success.
Then some one sold me a Garmin 12 GPS. I used a number of times with success . a number of people who flew with me just shook their heads and stated your trusting your life on a small screen. so the dawn of enlightenment is apron us . It seems the whisky compass is soon to be a relic . Just like morse code. Now It’s the purple line ,no magnetic deviation ,compass deviation, no paper maps ,and the pray wheel sits in the bottom of the flight bag.
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GAHorn
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Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2002 8:45 pm

Re: Navigation at its finest hour.

Post by GAHorn »

I remember back when I first joined the Assoc’n (1999) … reading thru some older “170 News” articles I’d purchased from a previous Member who’d decided to clear out his hangar)… the article written by the pilot, Robt Wells. It was a really GOOD read!

I just found at Amazon the paperback book of that flight…. still available and rec’d a copy just yesterday. It’s certainly more “meaty” than the 170 News article and I look forward to reading it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736562908?ps ... ct_details
F6CE18FD-7489-479F-94B2-8D6395E0EB3B.png
'53 B-model N146YS SN:25713
50th Anniversary of Flight Model. Winner-Best Original 170B, 100th Anniversary of Flight Convention.
An originality nut (mostly) for the right reasons. ;)
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