FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1933
1933 - 1155.PDF
FLIGHT, DECEMBER 7, 1933 INTER-AERODROME NAVIGATION By C. B. COLLINS (Mr. Collins is Technical Assistant in the Directorate of Civil Aviation.) ASSUMING every important town in the country to possess its own aerodrome, the question arises as to what navigational facilities will be required to assist the pilots of aircraft flying from aerodrome to aerodrome. The essential facilities are an efficient weather service and a W/T. direction finding organisation. In addition, for night flying, aerodrome and airway lighting, and for bad visibility conditions, some form of aid to blind land ings will be required. Let us examine these in turn, remembering that all are interconnected. Any pilot, before starting on a flight, wants a picture of the weather prevailing over the route, together with an indication of any changes likely to occur throughout the duration of his flight. The term " weather " as here used embraces a knowledge of the following simple factors: — (1) Prevailing conditions, e.g., whether blue sky, cloudy, raining, snowing, foggy, misty, etc. (2) Visibility. (3) Amount of cloud, height of base of lowest cloud. (4) Direction and speed of the wind. We can, by taking the primary organisation of the Meteorological Office, superimpose on it a secondary frame work whereby brief reports covering the four simple items to which reference has already been made are received. To make this secondary organisation effective, the simple observations must, when taken, be immediately trans mitted to the Central Meteorological Office. The Central Office must then analyse the data and distribute it to the aviation world. Owing to the initiative of the Automobile Association, there is already in existence at the Heston Airport a weather broadcasting station, now operated by the Air Ministry, which sends out at regular three hourly intervals brief details of the weather in simple form for selected meteorological stations. Any changes in the weather in the intervals between regular reports are further broadcast at hourly intervals. All these reports are capable of reception during flight. If the secondary organisation adumbrated above is applied on a large scale, the present process would become tedious. Even brief reports of a 100 stations would take some time to broadcast, station by station, and the listener who was interested in, say, number 99 on the list would become, to put it mildly, impatient. It would thus seem that the information must be analysed and apportioned to well defined regions. The bad features must be picked out and reference made to them region by region. A pilot interested in any particular route would then only have to listen for broadcasted information concerning the region or regions through which his intended route passed. If he wished to obtain further details, he could do so by referring to the nearest meteorological centre. There are 20 such centres now in existence in this country. For regular commercial routes, properly equipped meteorological stations will be required at terminal points. There is no difficulty concerning an adequate organisation. The routes from Croydon to the Continent furnish an example of the type of organisation required. Anyone interested can inspect the organisation and see it working for himself. So far as the general broadcast is concerned, the principal aim should be that the results of the observations taken should be available to the public with as little delay as possible. One does not want to be told at 3 p.m. that it was raining at Aber deen at 1 p.m. One wants to know this at 1.15 p.m. The brief reports required can easily be supplied by the aerodrome staff. No special skill is necessary. Rapidity in distribution may in the future be attained by some form of picture transmission, whereby a graphical representation of the essential information, plotted zone by zone, is received automatically and dis played at every aerodrome. The day may not be far distant when the meteoro logical elements will be plotted graphically on to a map of the country, divided into, say, 25-mile squares, and the whole broadcast by television process. If television apparatus becomes as universal as has the present radio receiver, the future pilot need not even bother to visit his aerodrome. He can make up his mind from his own home whether or not to brave the elements. Now we come to the question of wireless direction-finding. The various systems in use can be divided into two main categories. A.—Those in which direction is determined by ground stations and B.—Those in which direction is determined in the aircraft. Under the first or A category we have (1) the Bellini- Tosi system, (2) the Marconi-Adcock system. Under the second or B category we have (3) Wing- Coil system (Marconi-Robinson type), (4) Rotating-Beacon ANTWERP : This shows the excellent layout of one of the larger Continental airports. (Photo. J. Dower.) 1221 D
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
