The Use of Radio Sextants in Automatic Navigation Systems

Abstract

The basic principles of radio sextants are reviewed and their application is compared and contrasted with that of infra-red and visual wavelength sextants. For maximum versatility an automatic sextant should be able to operate both on radio wavelength and at one of the others. A complete automatic system requires not only a means of making automatic celestial observations but also a means of carrying the data forward—that is to say, as inertial reference. In the paper presented in Paris the development of inertial systems was briefly reviewed with particular reference to linear vibration gyrostats which lend themselves readily to light and compact systems where the highest accuracy is not required.It is suggested that future developments in automatic navigation may well see novel forms of inertial reference coupled to radio sextants of millimetre wavelengths.