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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 0182.PDF
66 FLIGHT. JANUARY 20, 1938. THE FUTURE of AIRCRAFT RADIO Modern Trends and Likely De- velopments : Some of the Difficulties Involved : Dissecting the Problems in the Different Services ; i By H. M. SAMUELSON THE progress made in the development of the world'saircraft radio services has tended to lag behind thatmade in air transport itself, with the result that, taking the broad divisions of Europe and America, the demand for certain changes is likely to be met in the near future. The shortcomings of the present systems are not entirely the fault of the radio engineers who planned the equipment on the ground or in the air, but rather are they the result of economic and international difficulties. For instance, the present arrangement, whereby most of the direction-finding in Europe is done at the ground stations, is both accurate and speedy where only one or two machines must be attended to, but it fails badly under heavy traffic conditions. This state of affairs has been apparent for some time, but before any changes could be made it was necessary to consider the extent of the invest- ment in existing plant and the capital cost of any new system in every country served by international air routes.' It does not seem probable that any revolutionary methods of communication or direction-finding will be adopted wholesale at any time, since changes in ground station equipment call for corresponding alterations or addi- tions in aircraft radio apparatus. New systems will at first need to be auxiliary to those existing—as in the case of the radio compass which, used in conjunction with special beacons, does not replace the aerodrome direction-finding service, but is used to supplement it. For the sake of convenience in attempting to forecast the trend of the aircraft radio services, we might divide the latter under the several headings of which they are composed as regards their functions, each one being further sub-divided as necessary: (i) Point to point; (2) meteoro^- logical; (3) air to ground and ground to air communication! (4) direction finding, (a) medium distance and (b) long distance ; and (5) approach and landing. .:• These services will be examined in turn, chiefly with reference to commercial aviation in Europe, so as to see where the existing methods are likely to be retained and where improvements are desirable. Naturally, many points are of a controversial nature, and local conditions, peculiar to one country or air route, may not fit in with the rest of the picture. Prophesy is always rather dan- gerous, and with so many variables to play with it would be rash to forecast that any one system or method will ultimately prevail. Likewise, from the pilots' point of view, many thingr»are desirable but are not found to be feasible in radio practice. Hence, an endeavour has been A good example of modern aircraft radio in- ;:stallation—the very complete Marconi equipment in the Short Empire boat. On the left is aclose-up of the sets with various parts uncovered for inspection. This installation comprises long .and short wave two-way equipment with a rotating loop, which may be used either forobtaining bearings or for homing, and a self- contained generating station, part of which maybe seen in the lower right-hand corner of the larger picture. made to take an average line of reasoning to satisfy the many interests involved. (1) Point to Point Services.—These are inter- aerodrome links used for the passing of routine messages, arrival and departure notices, and so on. Owing to the crowding-up of all wavelength bands, teleprinters are now replacing radio equipment for this work even though the latter has passed down from about 1,200 metres wavelength to 107 or 55 metres. This particularly applies to the network of aerodromes in one country, i.e., Germany. Provided that the speed and accuracy of messages are not affected, flying personnel have no interest in how this class of communication is carried out, the technical problems being the responsibility of communication engineers. One interesting system that has been working for some
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