1941 U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS TRAINING FILM " RADIO AIDS TO NAVIGATION " 32084

[@cliffweinan3907]

No wonder many older air transports had a navigator on the flight deck. To use radio range, you gotta multitask as a keen radio operator in a noisy cockpit. Can't fly too fast or easily overshoot / overcorrect the signal. This radio range system was replaced in the 1950s with the VOR / TACAN system that is still maintained today as a backup to GPS and inertial guidance. I believe some pilots use RNAV still based off VOR. I didn't realize fan markers still used in ILS approaches dated back to radio range days. The ILS uses similar tone discrimination of 90/150 hz tones to determine a flight path, but it is displayed on a guage rather than listening to volume of each tone. Radio range navigation was the breakthru tech that developed into aviation instrument IFR flying. Thanks for sharing this history.

[@hotrodmercury3941]

Its amazing how much you can learn from these old films

[@GCJACK83]

The work my grandpa did. Thanks, William D. Smith, for everything you did.

[@WCM1945]

This is the equipment my dad maintained as a civilian attache` to the USAAF. He was prone to airsickness and dreaded the airbourne proof-of-performance testing, for which he was requited to be present.

[@scottfranco1962]

Watching this, and being a pilot, there is a basic principle that carries over to today. You have to have a clear idea in your head what course you are navigating, and use the radio aids to reinforce that. If you lose track of where you are and what you are doing, the radio aid won't help. The other thing that occurs to me is that the four course radio range was actually a more advanced system that the original method. That would have consisted of flying ADFs, direction to radio stations, alone.

[@georgeshanks1113]

On a check ride, Pilots had to do a "Range Orientation". The examiner would put the aircraft somewhere in one of the 4 sectors. There was a procedure that a pilot could do to identify the quadrant in which he/she was located, then get on a beam, determine if going to or from the station and then go to the station and resume the flight. It was a complex procedure that required total concentration and accurate flying.

[@gmcjetpilot]

I learned to fly before GPS but some planes had LORAN... now GPS and Nav database makes it caveman simple to navigate. This video is really old school before my day. Radio range required pilots to listen to audio.

[@toddbaldwin3]

Phantom Phlier, you are absolutely right. I spent time as a navigator on F4, F111, B52s. I always kept up with my charts and an E6B calculator. I was pretty good at manual celestial navigation.

[@scottfranco1962]

Original Loran required use of graphs to work out your position. It was designed for ships, not aircraft.

[@toddbaldwin3]

Scott Franco : Correct. I suggest you look up something called Cyclan, or LORAN-C.

[@kaptainkaos1202]

@@scottfranco1962 it may have ORIGINALLY been for ships but as a P-3B radio operator part of my job was to preflight the LORAN, OMEGA and the LTN-72.

[@JoelSzymczyk]

@@kaptainkaos1202 I spent 17 years of my 21 years active duty in the USCG as a LORAN-C technician, making sure you had those signals to use. Went on to command three LORAN-C stations, got out shortly before the entire program was shut down. Always good to hear about someone using the signals we worked so hard to keep on air and in tolerance.

I saw this film was referenced in a B17 and a B24 manual I've got off the Internet. I fly these planes a lot in air simulators (mainly IL2 1946 and IL2 Great Battles), and radio beacon navigation is pretty though. That actally helped me !

[@lycossurfer8851]

@ 7:00 Wasn't cone of silence what they had in "Get Smart" TV series? If so, sounds like someone on the writing staff was a navigator or radio operator

[@672egalaxie6]

Plus the 'Pilot' looks like Artie Lange.

[@Night56Owl]

Almost all men in the sixties (of a certain age) served in WW2 or Korea. The writers of Get Smart and most other shows were in their thirties and forties. They probably did get the Cone of Silence from that.

[@michaelK3148]

Get Smart co-creator and writer Buck Henry served in Army during Korean War era as helicopter mechanic.

[@SearchIndex]

‘The cone of silence’ was also a phrase Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character used in the movie “Twister”

[@malcolmmarzo2461]

Old-time aviators called the Radio Range system "exhausting, nerve-racking." It is amusing how this film uses the word "easy" : -) We still use that word to minimize the difficulties of technology.

[@BicyclesMayUseFullLane]

Well, "easy" is relative. It's probably easier than flying in unfamiliar places in marginal weather under "Contact Flight Rules" (aka VFR).

[@BornRandy62]

an updated version of this was called TACAN tactical air navigation. There would be a transmitting set on each Navy ship . The range part was automated the identifier was assigned to the station. for example (ship name ) EA the receiving set had a bearing and range displayed . In the age of GPS the entire system is obsolete.

[@Hopeless_and_Forlorn]

The TACAN system provides both bearing and range, as you say. The range part of the TACAN system was borrowed by civilian aviation to supplement the VOR bearing system of the 1950s with distance information. The resulting hybrid system is known as VOR/DME, for Very high frequency Omni Range/Distance Measuring Equipment. Actually, the original terminology for the VOR system was Visual Omni Range, to emphasize that the pilot was provided with visual indications of bearing to or from a station, rather than having to listen to tones until he was ready to puke. After aural range stations disappeared from the scene, the V in VOR was redesignated to refer to the operating frequency band of the VOR stations. Functionally, VOR and DME are still separate systems, although the two systems are usually co-located at a common site. The pilot does not need to worry about this; when he tunes a VOR or localizer VHF frequency, the DME system is automatically tuned to the UHF channel assigned to accompany that frequency to add distance information. The Instrument Landing System, or ILS, frequently has a DME system associated with the localizer frequency to give the crew distance to runway information on the localizer. VOR and localizer are VHF analog systems, glide slope is UHF analog, and DME is UHF pulse technology. Markers still operate at 75 megacycles (MHz), believe it or not. Ain't GPS grand?

[@kaptainkaos1202]

TACAN = TACtical Aid to Navigation

[@JoelSzymczyk]

it's certainly been a while, but having graduated from the Navy TACAN tech C-School and having been the TACAN tech underway, I don't remember TACAN transmitting any range info. Both us and the aircraft used other means to provide range data. TACAN was bearing only to the ship. Memory is fading, but there was also an IFF piece of data. Basically the helo needs to get back to the ship, TACAN tells them what heading to take, RADAR and other means provides range.

[@TheFalconJetDriver]

@@JoelSzymczyk the IFF information Friend or Foe! 😁🛫

[@JoelSzymczyk]

@@TheFalconJetDriver right- I remember it as Identification Friend or Foe. CG ETC here, did you fly CG Falcons?

[@piobmhor8529]

It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since then. Now I just punch the route into the FMC, or even easier download the route through ACARS from dispatch, check the route on the flight plan and you’re done. We still train in the sim for old school navigation, but a VOR is waaaay easier than this, and the advent of GPS was a total game changer. Although it’s interesting to see how it was done, I must admit that I like our way better.

[@brontantwoord7266]

I thought this is what your radio gets when you listen to Nickel Back.

[@stevecoon3800]

The cone of silence I wonder if that's where Maxwell Smart from LMAO

[@CLdriver1960]

I flew my one and only Range Approach in a Simulator. Quite the challenge.

[@commandosolo_193]

i wonder how many are still there but not working.

[@GeneralGayJay]

I thought this channel was about how to avoid getting AIDS through Radio.

[@leejamestheliar2085]

VORTAC.......

[@abdulaiabdurahmani2913]

asalamaleium brothers ± we love those videos we learned a lot. INSHALLAH

[@kevinolesik1500]

isnt that tricky , just like a gps

[@Test-hw5fn]

During WW2 Germany developed a long distance radio aid called Sonne or what the Allies called Consol. The allies soon discovered what it was and use it themselves. So much so when their Spanish station went off the air due to a fault they made sure spare parts got there! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonne_(navigation)

[@slehar]

Wow! Thanks! That Orfordness beacon provides an intuitive example of how a regular VOR works, except the timing works electronically and cycles many times a second.. I used to tell my students to imagine a rotating-beam lighthouse with an omni-directional light on top that flashed whenever the beam passed North.

[@davidrobinson1230]

My Brain Hurts!

[@SuburbanDon]

I'd have crashed for sure.

[@thawachyasintinoraskasloui4238]

My reaction to watching this: 😋

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Glad you found it and enjoy it, and thanks for being a sub! Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.

[@GeorgeLiquor]

Definitely want to stay out of the N zone

[@good.citizen]

nat atbot GPT-3 [:||].. " everything is 5g now. "

[@datasecure5790]

I never knew a radio could get AIDS🤔🤔🤔

[@8800081]

*NO!* don't use the radio, that's just what they'll be expecting you to do!

[@peterhoebarth4234]

1.37 AZ - Map, Earth is flat.