Reply To: Air Navigation

[JDavHouston]

Well, Earhart did one very important thing that still lasts to this day, the creation of the 99s. Sometimes the legacy we want isn’t the legacy we get. Sadly, Noonan is unknown in most aviation circles these days, with the exception of discussions of the Earhart disappearance.

As far as being difficult to learn, I’m no CW (continuous wave, the ham name for morse code) operator, but I don’t think it’s any more difficult than learning celestial navigation. It’s all about having the willingness to do some paperwork and exercises that most do not do because there is ‘no need’ anymore.

VOR is VHF Omni Range. It allows you to find your relative position to any of 360 ‘radial’ courses from a station – this allows you to navigate fairly easily from one station to another without any specialized equipment. ILS is the ‘instrument landing system’ that allows an aircraft to follow a signal down through the clouds and fog right to the runway. Both systems transmit a repeated identification in Morse that the pilot uses to make certain they are receiving the right signal before using it to navigate.

LORAN was a totally different system, and has been turned off and unavailable since February 2010. Aviation navigation is all either VOR stations (the backup) or GPS (the main system) now. Of course, pilotage and dead reckoning are still taught, but are fast becoming a lost art themselves it seems.

I’m considered an extreme oddity for considering air celestial navigation.

I have some rare(ish) wrenches on the way for my sextant which should allow me to adjust the calibration, per some videos I watched. We’ll see how it goes, I’m going to have to “get creative with some lasers” to build a collimator to adjust this thing.