Hi
I was wondering how pilots navigated before flight management computers plotted the course on the navigation display and magenta bars on the primary flight display lined them up with the ils or their course. Also the option for the auto pilot to follow the course with the nav setting.
Did they just fly of headings or was there away to get the flight path on analog dials?
George

You would fly from VOR to VOR, use LORAN, or use the INS/IRS.

My operator started out with dual LTN-92 INS systems in the DC-10-10F and triple LTN-92 in the DC-10-30F fleets. Later, DC-10-10s were acquired from United and converted to all cargo. In these, only VOR/DME were retained from the prior operator. Later, the entire fleet were converted to MD-10 with triple FMS/IRU in all types.

nws2002 wrote:

You would fly from VOR to VOR, use LORAN, or use the INS/IRS.

Loran C or A was never a stand alone nav system, but rather a system used to supplement celestial or Doppler. Before INS & Omega airlines flying oceanic routes used Dual Doppler backed up by Loran A and briefly Loran C. This was the system that eliminated the professional navigator. TWA and Pan Am both used the doppler/loran combo, quickly followed by NWA/CAL/Braniff all followed suit in the 707's/ I believe EAL used Loran to some extent in the DC8-60 series. Maybe GF will add to this EAL report.

While Pan Am did operate the 707 with the Delco Carousel it really never repleced the doppler/loran as the 707''s were phased out. INS, be it Litton LTN51, or the Carousel were the mainstay of 747, DC10, and L1011 production.

And don't forget celestial navigation. Some planes had sextant ports in their roofs just for that purpose.

(Some curious minds have attached a hose to these ports to vacuum the cockpit.)

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David

David, you must not have read or understood the previous post regarding cel nav, The hose story is mostly a military story FWIW. Cel Nav + Loran was the mainstay long range nave resource until 1960/62 on the North Atlantc until TWA changed that.

David, you must not have read or understood the previous post regarding cel nav, The hose story is mostly a military story FWIW. Cel Nav + Loran was the mainstay long range nave resource until 1960/62 on the North Atlantc until TWA changed that.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Can’t say on EAL DC-8s, before my time. They did fly a lot of MAC Expansion to Asia with the -8s, very senior. Some of the captains I flew with operated them. I know they had Doppler, bu5 am surprised the navs went away prior to INS introduction.

I flew a F-100 delivery to Spain. I was in the back seat and the pilot in front had been a KC-97 nav. We’re 400 nm off STG and he casually mentions we’re a good bit north of track. Tanker nav is using cel and is quite confident when challenged. Bill hands back a chart with CONSOLAN plots. Sure the STG TACAN locks on about 30* to the right at about 180nm.


GF

There was a CONSOLAN station close to Pt Reys back in the 60's the we used "occasionally" but for the most part it was worthless.

From the early 60's until the 747 was introduced LORAN/Doppler ruled unless you had a Navigator onboard. Doppler/LORAN was not suitable for latitude fly like polar ops, so the Nav using Grid & celnav was still the norm. TWA did not have Nav so they sated in the lower Lats, usually below 76N. while Pan Am still used the Nav/Relief Pilot and operated at high
polar latitudes. Both used the Bendix Polar Path compass systems which were pretty common in the 707/DC8's of that era.

IASCO had a cadre of professional navigators back in thise days that would lease out to various airlines who were in need of extra help. Both CAL/WAL/BNF used these until they got their LORAN/DOPPLER FAA approvals.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

A couple of friends were at PAA in the mid-sixties as Relief Pilot/Navs. IIRC, they qualified as B-47 pilots with nav experience. That position paid another $50 a month than flight engineers.

GF

I have to question that as I was one of those 707 2nd Officers once upon time and the FE' made about $250 per month more than the NAV/RP bid holders The FEIA took care to make sure they remained on top of the then pay scales. When you were hired at Pan Am it was pretty much the luck of the draw regarding what pipeline you went down, be it Navigation or Flight Engineer. Until the fall of 1963 all FE's were professional ones. Then ALPA demanded at least 3 pilots on the flight deck and started training the existing FE's so as to get the Commercial/Instrument rating and once finished, they return\ed to the flight deck. It was pretty common to have 5 flight deck crew members + 1 sitting in the cabin.
Captain, F/O, FE, RP and a non RP qualified NAV or 3rd officer+ an RP, 2nd Office + a relief FE. This did not last long and was pretty much obsolete by 1968.

Of course there was no Nav on the 747 , but there was a sextant port which was used all the way through the 747-400 as a smoke vent. The 747-8 being the first 747 to not have this feature. worth noting that AF One does have a Nav station albeit it is more of an inflight dispatch utility than a navigator station.

For our flights to Canada's arctic in the 737-200 Combi, we used ONS. (Omega Nav). INS could not be used in the high Arctic. The old autopilots of the day would not track a nav course, so we used headling sel bracketing the information on the ONS sets. When close enough, we reverted back to VOR/NDB navigation, but still in heading sel.

Here's the kicker ... for our pilots to fly an Arctic Flight we also had to be proficient in using the Astro Compass and finding the sun's true bearing! And this was in the 90s!!

When GPS became approved, the aircraft were all re-equipped. However, as I was off the aircraft by then, I don't know if they still had to be able to use the Astro Compass. (The aircraft still had them, just not sure if they still had the twice yearly testing by Transport Canada showing proficiency).

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

A couple of friends were at PAA in the mid-sixties as Relief Pilot/Navs. IIRC, they qualified as B-47 pilots with nav experience. That position paid another $50 a month than flight engineers.

It's funny you should say that. At Air Canada, when flying an "overseas" flight, the pilots garner additional "Overseas / Navigation" pay. For Captains, it's about an addional $25 an hour.

The origin of that pay? During the DC-8 days, if a flight required a navigator a fourth crewmember was added. Not a pilot, just a trained Navigator. However, if the aircraft was equipped with INS, as some DC-8s were, then a Navigator was not needed nor carried. The three remaining pilots divided up the Navigator's pay!!

So today, in 2018, when a Triple heads out of YYZ to HKG, the pilots are paid additional OVS/NAV pay because 40 years ago, those brand spanking new DC-8-63s and -54JTs had INS!

Don't recall the rates but $25 split 3 ways sounds close. Some how I'm sure the Capt would carve out a bigger chunk of that for himself.")

I recalll seeing an Astro compass installed on a 737 once upon a time but other than looking at I remain clues about is't operation. Seem to recall BOAC and few others using it as well for high latitude operations?

United installed the LTN-72 on our DC8's and DC10's, years ago when i got hired in 1984.
The later Inertials were Collins Ring laser Gyros. After the DC8's and DC10's were retired and sold off.

strfyr51 wrote:

United installed the LTN-72 on our DC8's and DC10's, years ago when i got hired in 1984.
The later Inertials were Collins Ring laser Gyros. After the DC8's and DC10's were retired and sold off.

I'm surprised that UAL used any Collins INS applications as generally they were a total failure, The only airlines that I can think of that went the DC10 Collins route were Western and Continental much to their disappointment.

BravoOne wrote:

strfyr51 wrote:

United installed the LTN-72 on our DC8's and DC10's, years ago when i got hired in 1984.
The later Inertials were Collins Ring laser Gyros. After the DC8's and DC10's were retired and sold off.

I'm surprised that UAL used any Collins INS applications as generally they were a total failure, The only airlines that I can think of that went the DC10 Collins route were Western and Continental much to their disappointment.

Well? the Box was Orange and Black and had Collins on it. And? they workedand we worked them in our shops at SFO. They always seemed reliable though I'm sure we might have had some Bendix units in the fleet somewhere.

You cam be sure that Bendix never made an INS, Pretty sure UAL used the Carousel IV, in the DC10, just as they did in the 747-100/200. Maybe a Colins FDR??
The Collins INS was very expensive out of the box and had a poor MTBF rate.

Fascinating discussion! Having myself started flying in the FMS/GPS age, I have always wondered how Long Range Nav was done back in the day...

Do you guys happen to know any good websites/books/SOP of how it was done in practice?

thepinkmachine wrote:

Fascinating discussion! Having myself started flying in the FMS/GPS age, I have always wondered how Long Range Nav was done back in the day...

Do you guys happen to know any good websites/books/SOP of how it was done in practice?

Don't any of you guys know about Google?

http://propspistonsandoldairliners.blog ... annon.html

This is pre 707 material but when the 707 was first introduced it was pretty much the same as depicted in this article. I found this interesting as back in the sixties when I spent 2 year as a Pan Am Nav/RP they decided to move a number of DC6B's from the Berlin base to HKG to support R&R flights out of Vietnam. They needed to ferry these DC6B's to either JFK/MIA and then to SFO for repositioning to HKG. I went on one trip as a relief navigator SFO/HKG which was interesting as I had flown the DC6b as an FE/FO, at a previous airline from which I was furloughed.

Great stuff, gentlemen! The website was a great read, I will look into Lindbergh’s book too. I do have a general idea how it worked, but I’m more interested in actual techniques/methods used. Even got myself a sextant recently!

Great thread, a trip down memory lane. Most of the DC-8s I flew had the Litton/ Carousel INS. A few had Omega (ONS) which was a lot less reliable (specially during sunrise). And like others have mentioned we did get “INS pay”. These DC-8s had an AUX NAV selection on the autopilot so they could fly the INS/ONS track, which only stored 9 waypoints at a time.

thepinkmachine wrote:

Great stuff, gentlemen! The website was a great read, I will look into Lindbergh’s book too. I do have a general idea how it worked, but I’m more interested in actual techniques/methods used. Even got myself a sextant recently!

Google the FAA Flight Navigator Handbook for the how do it stuff. Keep it beside for easy reading:)

arcticcruiser wrote:

Great thread, a trip down memory lane. Most of the DC-8s I flew had the Litton/ Carousel INS. A few had Omega (ONS) which was a lot less reliable (specially during sunrise). And like others have mentioned we did get “INS pay”. These DC-8s had an AUX NAV selection on the autopilot so they could fly the INS/ONS track, which only stored 9 waypoints at a time.

DAL had a pretty neat system in some of their L1011s. I was an early version of an FMC as we know it today and it used the Carousel platform to run up to 99 wpts (as I recall).I think Saudia had it as well> Built by a British concern but I forget who I was now.

BravoOne wrote:

Google the FAA Flight Navigator Handbook for the how do it stuff. Keep it beside for easy reading:)

Amen, Brother! That’s precisely, what I’ve been looking for!

My uncle used to work avionics maintenance on Western Airlines.

Way back in the probably late 70's/early 80's he let me visit the planes in LAX (before security). He showed me around. I asked him about navigation to Hawaii. He said that on the 720B's it was dead reckoning, then they would get close enough to Hawaii to pick up a VOR and that led them to HNL. He also mentioned the sextant port and how the FE would sight on the stars if it was a night flight.

He said that when other airlines' 747s started flying LAX-HNL, the Western 720B pilots mentioned that if they were piloting a flight right after a 747 departure, they could just follow the contrails of the 747 (which had the newfangled INS) and arrive within 3 miles or so of HNL! At the time I was amazed at that degree of accuracy. That was before GPS of course...

Chemist wrote:

My uncle used to work avionics maintenance on Western Airlines.

Way back in the probably late 70's/early 80's he let me visit the planes in LAX (before security). He showed me around. I asked him about navigation to Hawaii. He said that on the 720B's it was dead reckoning, then they would get close enough to Hawaii to pick up a VOR and that led them to HNL. He also mentioned the sextant port and how the FE would sight on the stars if it was a night flight.

He said that when other airlines' 747s started flying LAX-HNL, the Western 720B pilots mentioned that if they were piloting a flight right after a 747 departure, they could just follow the contrails of the 747 (which had the newfangled INS) and arrive within 3 miles or so of HNL! At the time I was amazed at that degree of accuracy. That was before GPS of course...

These kind of posts are what makes ANET a joke at times and your uncle clueless. WAL 707s and 720B(H), both had dual Bendix doppler and a EDO600T Loran which could operated by trained pilots or navigators and there was no dead reckoning, or following contrails. If you can't post something intellegntt maybe you shouldn't post at all. For sure......the FE never handled the periscopic sextan, and just one last point, sextants were used for both stars and sun.

So much misinformation in one post. Simply amazing!

thepinkmachine wrote:

Great stuff, gentlemen! The website was a great read, I will look into Lindbergh’s book too. I do have a general idea how it worked, but I’m more interested in actual techniques/methods used. Even got myself a sextant recently!

When I thumbed though that FAA flight navigator handbook, to me it looked suspiciously like a stripped down version of the American Practical Navigator.

You can google American practical navigator or pub 9 or its also known as just Bowditch if you’re interested in checking that out as well.

the FAA flight navigator handbook is the simplified, easier to read version.

We were able to sail from Australia all the way to Pearl Harbor and San Diego using just celestial. We weren’t off by more than a few miles once we got sight of land and reestablished our DR position using visual land fixes. But now we just use the air almanac instead of the nautical almanac. The air almanac is just a subset of the nautical almanac and good enough for government work.

As I recall there are about 57 navigational stars and only about half of those were "approved" for navigation. As long as you stayed within the approved resorces you were in pretty good shape.

Zweng was a publisher of various manuals to prepare you for the FAA, ATR, FE A&P and Fit Navigator written exams back in the 50' and 60's. These were tough exams back then.

The FAA will still issue the Flight Navigator rating but it's almost impossible to get the required experience to take the exam. I have a freind dwn in the FAA International Ops filed office who is an examiner but he has not issued a rating in years.

flyingturtle wrote:

And don't forget celestial navigation. Some planes had sextant ports in their roofs just for that purpose.

(Some curious minds have attached a hose to these ports to vacuum the cockpit.)

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David

Is that what that port is for? A 727 pilot commented to me that it was for dead flashlight battery disposal. On the 747-400, the sextant port is used for cockpit smoke evacuation. There is a handle on the P-5 (overhead) panel that opens the port by way of a cable.

You can be sure that airliners not have a vac hose stored on the flight deck for anything like that. I think that is a C130 story....that has been told many times over and over.
A numer of 727's had a nav station with the sextant port. The one I had seen in the past belonged to TIA and Wolrd Airways, probably a few others as well. Sicking batteries through the post would be risky at best. Hitting the rudder or Q spring could make for interesting writeup in the logbook .

The pilots comment might have been "tongue in cheek" being that a battery would probably get sucked down the center engine's intake.

stratclub wrote:

The pilots comment might have been "tongue in cheek" being that a battery would probably get sucked down the center engine's intake.

Agreed. but was I not talking about the 727 aa it does not have a Q Spring.

I did say 727 in post #34...............

I remember the Q spring on the lower vertical fin from my old 707 days. Didn't the Q spring have something to do with controlling Dutch Roll or was it artificial feel for the rudder?

Q Spring was part of the boosted rudder feel system....as I recall.

Yep! http://www.adastron.com/707/qantas/Q-bellows.htm