HISTORY OF RADIO FLIGHT NAVIGATION （无线电飞行导航的历史）.pdf

HISTORY OF RADIO FLIGHT NAVIGATION SYSTEMS PREFACE The development of instrument landing systems and flight navigation systems go hand in hand and as such their history is presented together in this book. Much of this history is not known to aviators or the public in the English speaking countries because the documentation of the early technical development has been printed in German and never translated into English. As such I thought it would be appropriate to translate some of the German published information, combine it with the modern navigation technology, and make it available for anyone interested in this most interesting topic. Many aviators and pilots today, take for granted, the history of the development of the navigation aids that are aboard their aircraft. Their interest lies mainly in learning how to use the equipment but the technological development is over looked. The first navigation highways in the sky were radio beams transmitted by ground stations. Today most navigation is done with the “global positioning system” called GPS. Certainly the GPS, which uses satellites to give the pilot a fix on where his is located in relation to the world around him, is a major recent breakthrough in navigation and it is hard to imagine today flying without it. However, most general aviation (GA) aircraft today still use the VHF onmidirectional radio range (VOR) equipment as a primary or back up navigation aid. They still use the ILS system developed many years ago. These systems are still powered by radio and Klystron tubes. No! not everything is controlled by microchips. The history behind the development of the GPS is not discussed even though it is an out growth of the early navigation systems. But the development