Re: (NEED) panel.cfg with CIVA INS for BAC 1-11
Posted: 17 Jun 2010, 13:39
Benedettini : as I am one of only about 3 on this board who remembers this era , I will try and paint the picture of the late 60s -early 70s as I remember them. For over water navigation astro was the norm until the INS appeared, although some aircraft did have LORAN . The airways system in Europe was very much as it is now , except that the use of waypoints other than beacons was much more restricted , and was IIRC generally restricted to DME fixes on certain radials from VORs , or to crosscuts from 2 VORs . The primary navaid for long distance ( ie 100-150NM ) use was the VOR sometimes with DME and sometimes without . For local and approach use the NDBs were the norm to enable procedural establishment on an ILS approach. ILS was much less plentiful than it is now and there were a lot of non-precision approaches using NDBs , and also Surveillance Radar Approaches in which the track was monitored by radar , and height instructions were given at regular intervals ( eg "turn right 2 degrees, you are now 4 miles from touchdown, your height ( QFE was used then rather than QNH which is now the norm) should be 1200 feet") . SIDS were commonly based on intercepting a particular VOR radial at a given DME distance, although there were quite a number which used NDBs which was definitely more challenging particularly at night and even more particularly if there was thunderstorm activity around . It all required you to keep a plan view of the situation in your mind whereas now it is all laid out in front of you on a screen , and this was so even if you were given the luxury of Radar Vectoring to an ILS approach . Incidentally, the system in Russia was, and to some extent remains, largely NDB based . I expect Peter Maclelland who had far more experience than me can give a fuller picture, but this is an outline of what was, with increasing speeds, an interesting era in aviation
