Early Air Navigation - it's all new to me!

[Head in the clouds]

I've just come across these very early air navigation aids, I'd never heard of them before. And what a massive enterprise it was to install them.

 

The first is a series of giant illuminated concrete arrows cast every ten miles or so right across North America, from East to West and North to South. Each one had it's own gas-fired 'lighthouse' and a cottage for a caretaker to keep it burning. They were installed for the mailplanes which mainly flew in the cooler and smoother conditions at night. A few of these giant arrows still survive, here is an interesting write up and pics.

 

Giant Arrows Across America

 

Navigating the deserts of North Africa was another challenge that was temporarily solved when "some now forgotten genius suggested ..... plowed furrow, of some two meters' width, could serve as a line-of-sight navigational aid." So they did .... "and in 1922, teams on Fordson tractors, pulling weighted plows and escorted by armored cars, set out eastward from Amman and westward from Baghdad, aiming to meet halfway. They plowed a total of some 500 kilometers (310 mi), and the remainder of the route, which lay over scattered black basalt rock, they marked in white paint ..."

 

Here is a fascinating article about this form of navigation which became known as 'FTF' and much more, at the end is a first-hand account of a trip by Imperial Airways in the Sunderland Flying Boats, quite an interesting comparison to our modern 'cattle class' travel.

 

FTF - Flying the Furrow

 

Then there is the early form of IFR in UK - following railways and the like, which became known as flying the Bradshaw because they painted the names of the railway stations on the roofs and pilots carried the railways timetable which was published by Bradshaw.

 

Does anyone know of other 'systems' prior to radio navaids?

 

 

[johnm]

yes ......... also about when the early radio stations broardcast (the 1920's) they were very powerful to tansmit some distance - farmers said the could the broardcast through there fence lines (fences acting as as a radio receiver)

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Geography is a bit out, HITC (Amman is in the Mid East not North Africa) but awesome history! I had never heard of this, and was inclined to believe the hundreds of concrete arrows lit by gas beacons was an April Fools story.

 

These stories of Government willing to quickly make big investments in air travel contrast to today's glacial progress.

 

 

[bilby54]

Qantas used light towers along the air routes across Qld in the earlydays for navigation

 

 

[Ultralights]

i remember looking for town names written on the Pub roof when flying long ago in Oz. there is also a big arrow painted on a water tower pointing to Bankstown airport somewhere in the lane of entry to the north.

 

 

[metalman]

A mate told me that that navigating the outback was easy cause all the properties have the names on the roof,,,,,,,,of course at 8500 the houses are the size of a thumbnail, bastard!

 

The qantas system is pretty cool, on a recent trip around the Windorah/Longreach area I was often struck by the thought that I was flying the same track as some of the pioneers, and a formidable country it is too.

 

Matty

 

 

[Bandit12]

Great link to the concrete arrows. I'm doing a Route 66 ride in 2015 and will be riding right past the only one that is still intact (with light tower and shack) so will have to add it to the agenda and take some pictures.

 

 

[kaz3g]

A mate told me that that navigating the outback was easy cause all the properties have the names on the roof,,,,,,,,of course at 8500 the houses are the size of a thumbnail, bastard!The qantas system is pretty cool, on a recent trip around the Windorah/Longreach area I was often struck by the thought that I was flying the same track as some of the pioneers, and a formidable country it is too.

 

Matty

Matty

 

When I had the station in the Upper Gascoyne we had a visit from a flying padre in a C182. He over flew the homestead at a low level revving his engine, the common way of telling those below you were landing and would like to be picked up from the airstrip.

 

I duly collected the padre-pilot and 3 pax who had flown in from Meekatharra.

 

After some time where he kept on calling me by the wrong name I corrected him and said, "You know you are at Cobra Homestead, don't you?"

 

He said "isn't this Dalgety Downs? I came to see David Steadman."

 

He was a bit non-plussed when I told him DD was more than 120 miles south.

 

He then pulled out a very worn 1956 Shell roadmap to check his navigation!

 

And we all had the station names painted on our roofs, too.

 

Kaz