New Radio Navigation To Assist Test Pilots In Emergency

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 1, 16 January 1952, Page 2

New Radio Navigation To Assist Test Pilots In Emergency

British test pilots are using a new radio navigation aid which ensures rapid landings in case of emergency — a direction-finder giving them almost instantaneously a course to bring them back over base. The dir-ection-finder is basically a pointer swinging slowly round a dial marked off in degrees — in appearance rather like a large compass. The pilot merely calls up the control tower on his radio, asks for a course to steer to get him back to base and then the pointer instantly swings round to the correct figure. The complete equipment is about the size of a television set and repeater dials can be set up anywhere on the airfield. The high frequency equipment, developed by Marconis, is already installed in the control tower of Wharton airfield, where the Canberra is tested, and at de Havilland's Hatfield. Test pilots from other companies have tried it out and orders have been placed for the equipment of their own base airfields. It is so accurate that de Havilland test pilots have been picked up and brought back to Hatfield from as far away as the Dutch coast and Paris. The demand for this quick aid to navigation eame with the increasing speed of the jet machines. Previously a pilot who wanted the bearing of his base airfield had to wait j while a complicated procedure was gone through on the ground. A radio loop aerial, mounted on top of the control tower, was wound round by hand while a radio operator listened to the aircraft's signal, which got gradually stronger and then weaker as he rotated the aerial. At the fade-out point the operator would note the direction in which the loop pointed and make the necessary checks, ensuring that the bearing was not the reverse (reciprocal) one. He could then pass on a direction to the pilot. i This method, still used in many parts of the world, is so slow for jet aircraft that if a pilot calls up the flying control tower when he is 30 miles off, and asks for a bearing, he vvill either have found or missecl the airfield by the time the answer comes through. ■ ' i in i ' ■ i i '■■if'