Voices in the Sky

Radio Record, Volume VI, Issue 21, 2 December 1932, Page 8

Voices in the Sky

S How Airmen Keep Touch --eee ADIO has played a big part in making the airways safe. The constant anxiety of the pilot in bad weather has been done away with completely, for he is constantly in touch with his base. Actually there are three main tasks undertaken by radio in airway operation. In the first place it acts as does the signalling system of 9 railway, messages flashing constantly from one air-port to another, reporting the arrival or departures of aircraft on their scheduled flights; and this ground-sig-nalling is reinforced by messages from machines which are actually in the air, thus enabling the traffic controller to plot out the position of such craft while they are en route between stations. This means that there are two checks, always, upon the movements of aircraft-one at frequent intervals while they are in flight, and the other as they arrive at, or depart from, the yarious air-ports along a route.

Weather Reports. ANOTHER of the tasks of wireless is to transmit from station to station those reports as to the weather which it-is essential should be at the disposal of pilots before they begin their filights ; and in this respect the meteorological and wireless departments co-operate so efficiently that messages now flash constantly along our main air lines, giving immediate news of any weather changes which may be in progress; while even after he had studied, just before ascending, the conditions ahead along his route, and while he is actually in flight with his passengers, mails, and freight, a pilot has only to call up on hig wireless telephone to be given last-minute reports as to the local weather existing at the point at which he is scheduled to alight. Thus not only when he is on the ground, but also when he is up in the air, a watchful weather bureau, relying upon wireless for its rapid communication, is ever at the airman’s service.

Positions Always Available. OR does this complete its task, because one of the greatest boons it confers on pilots is its power, at any time required, to tell them their position when they are flying above cloud or fog, or to give them wireless beating upon any station toward which they may be flying. Constantly are

_-a ee ie oe ground operators. listening for tha voices that come to them out of the sky, and by quick and aceurate working between stations-each of which takes bearings upon the signals from the aeroplane-a pilot who may have been flying for some time above cloud or fog, and who wants to check his position in relation to the ground he , cannot see below, can obtain the in- o formation he needs in less than a minute from the moment when, say, he calls up the London air-port, or any other main station. . The method is as simple as it is efficacious, Any two stations located at some distance from each other, and which may be engaged in such an operation, both listen to the distant plane, obtaining individual bearings which tell them the point in the sky from which, so far as they are each concerned, the signals emanate, Then the operator at one of the two stations plots out both these bearings on a big map, and the distant spot at which they meet, and which may be some. where, say, above mid-Channel, is the Doint where the aeroplane is flying at the moment, ‘

In Constant Touch. ON the long-distance ' Empire an lines wireless is a romance as wel! as a science. Along the 6000 miles African route, for example, 17 stations now keep in touch with aircraft in flight, and even when they are high over tropical forests remote from civilisation the pilots of the air mail are in constant touch with one or other of these wireless posts. It is the ability to employ such aids as these, particularly when an airway is operating in difficult weather, which may mean ail the difference between maintaining a service to schedule or being obliged to cancel or delay it. Without radio and meteorology it would, in fact, be impossible for Imperial Airways, even with their skilled pilots, and big dependable multi-engineg craft, to maintain as they do on an all-the-year-round basis a reliability which now stands at a figure as high as 94,7 per cent, ;

pA ? _ 2YA 9.2 p.m., Monday, December 5 + *