III.—Training Methods for Navigation in the Air

Abstract

The civil aviation problems in training navigators may appear simple compared with those of our marine colleagues, and possibly also in comparison to the military side of aviation. In civil aviation we are concerned with tactical problems but not to the same extent as in marine and military aviation, but there are those amongst us who can recall the halycon days of flying boats when we too were concerned with the tides and the state of the water. Since the end of the war there have been far reaching changes in civil aviation and navigation. The object used to be one of getting from A to B and battling a great deal with the unknown—long night hauls across the North Atlantic, Shannon and Keflavik, icy cold arrivals at Goose and Gander, pressure pattern flying and so on, with the minimum of navigation equipment, poor weather forecasting and limited range aircraft. Nowadays civil aircraft range is not the problem it used to be, although some such problems still exist, navigation equipment is more sophisticated and the A.T.C. requirements much more stringent. It is not so much getting from A to B as staying as close as possible to an assigned A.T.C. track.