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MDN
Nelson Minar
Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License
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The very first radio navigation for aircraft was the Low-frequency
radio range. Marvellously simple idea: a directional radio station
broadcasts the Morse code for A · – to the north and south,
and N – · to the east and west. You listen to that
transmission in your headset. You listen to the station in your
airplane; if you hear A you're north or south of the station, N east or
west. But if you're directly NW, NE, SW, or SE of the station you hear
both A and N overlapping and merging into a single steady tone. Fly that
tone and you're flying in a straight line right to or from the beacon.
Of course the station doesn't have to be oriented to north, the actual
navigation network had some 400 stations in the US defining a network of
airways.
Aviation enthusiasts WWRB have built a working four course range, demonstrated in the video above. Skip to 4:28 for a technical explanation or 7:17 for a demo flight. Four course ranges were decommissioned about 40 years ago in favour of VOR, the system we use today. VOR is the same principle but lets you fly any bearing and uses electronics instead of sound to track the radial. |
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