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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1249.PDF
THURSDAY JULY IS, 1963 Number 2836 Volume 84 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KINO MBE Technical Editor W. T. OUNSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News • Air Commerce Mannanan and Cambrian National Collection Sport and Business Intruders and Hawkeyes Lycoming Turbofans Straight and Level Missiles and Spaceflight Letters Industry international Service Aviation 78 81 89 91 92 94 96 98 99 107 108 110 Hill* Transport Publication! Ltd, Dorset. House, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5 5s. Canada and USA $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at Hew York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3 ; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 82 Bucha nan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone Central 1266-6. New York, NY : Thomas Skinner & Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1963. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Official Organ ot the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 Where to Point . . . THERE can be few piloting achievements more satisfying than a skilfully accomplished approach and landing in marginal weather. How often have many of us worked tensely as the aircraft has descended into darkening cloud, groping our way closer and closer to the ground, step by step through the radio procedure? The tension becomes extreme as the seconds tick away and the cloudbreak must come at any moment. Then the first glimpse of the ground, a tree or a road flitting by below, followed by the streaking glow of the approach lights. The relief and satisfaction of this, the most precise and exacting manoeuvre in transport operation, are well known to any IFR pilot. Anyone who has tackled the task of acquiring this technique will remember the hours of sweating in Link trainers and simulators, the mental gymnastics of radio compass flying, and the slow progress to the point where the approach chart easily gives up its vital clues. Eventually, the pilot learns to manoeuvre with stop-watch and rule of thumb into that critical groove down to the runway threshold. It is a triumph of pilotage. But surely, in this tortuous lore, we are working ourselves up, as Bob Hope once said, "from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.'1 It is incredible that we must substitute stop-watch and reported wind for distance-to-touchdown information; that we must fly a back-bearing by computing a radio compass needle position into drift and magnetic bearing by mental arithmetic, which can become painfully difficult under stress. Admittedly, we have evolved numerous ingenious palliatives. ILS gives continuous guidance in two planes. RMIs eliminate some of the radio-compass gymnastics. Director instruments do some of the comput ing for us. Radar vectoring short-circuits some of the initial jockeying for alignment and some of the procedural manoeuvres. Coupled autopilots eliminate most of the manual and mental gymnastics. Automatic landing offers a near-complete solution at a cost only the select few can afford. But none of these systems really answers in so many words the basic questions "Where am I in relation to the touchdown point and how far have I still to go ? . . . and How Far to Go However, the approach problem is relatively more direct than that of flying accurately on airways. The traditional existing aids tell the pilot everything but the two facts he must know, namely, when he will reach the reporting point and where, geographically, he is at any moment between points. True, DME and Doppler may provide answers of a sort, but at considerable expense. The fundamental problems in navigation are to know in which direction to point the aircraft and for how long. The first is reasonably well solved by beacons, but the second is a computation based on wind forecasts modified by observation on an uncertain knowledge of position except at certain discreet moments when passing a beacon, and by short-lived estimates of ground speed. Most of the accepted computations have been developed because the essential information is unobtainable and any more sensible procedure is impossible to apply. Only an area-coverage, position-fixing aid with pictorial presentation, of which Decca Navigator has for years been the prophet in the wilderness, would solve the basic deficiency and bring commonsense and flexibility into IFR navigation. It is high time we admitted that airways navigation today is the most ill-developed area in aviation, and made a determined effort to satisfy the fundamental requirements, instead of doggedly elaborating the 30-year-old beacon concept. We speak from experience.
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