Abstract
IT has been announced that the Directorate of Civil Aviation, Air Ministry, and the National Physical Laboratory, are co-operating in the study of problems relative to ‘blind’ flying as applied to air-line operation. The immediate necessities are three-fold, and the use of wireless transmission appears to offer the most likely means of their solution. Theyaro: (1) The transmission of direction finding information over as long a range as possible, probably by short-wave radio. (2) Devices for warning the pilot of the proximity of obstructions such as high masts, or evon other aircraft, in conditions of poor visibility. (3) The accurate guiding in and landing of aircraft when an aerodrome is obscured by fog, or in any similar conditions of reduced visibility. The Air Ministry is using a Vickers “Viastra”, until recently the property of the Prince of Wales; it will be fitted with the necessary apparatus as soon as preliminary experiments have indicated the most promising type, and will be flown by Imperial Airways pilots. Tho aerodromes from which thoy will operate will probably be Croydon, Gatwiek, and Gravesend. Imperial Airways will also be invited to send out signals at pre-arranged times, to the pilots of their normal machines, when over Africa and on the way to India and Australia, from which the reliability of different systems can be judged. A type of ‘approach’ beacon for blind landing, giving out a short aural note over a range of 20–25 miles, has already been ordered for experiment. If this is successful, the problem will then be to develop the use of a long-range direction finding system for uso in conjunction with the short-range system, but without interfering with it.
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Direction Finding and Blind Flying for Civil Aviation. Nature 136, 252 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136252b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136252b0