Classic British Flight Sim

Hi,
Just curious if anybody knew what would a flight plan looked like in the mid 50's for the routes in the video below?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0JavaNX ... re=related

I am curious as to what radio navigation aids were available at that time, and what was customary to use, say for an early jet in those days (like in the video). Also, would there be any chance to find any period plotting charts/maps for such a route? I would like to try one of the route segments shown in the video, flown the way it was used to in those days. Thanks in advance for your help,
regards.
Macs

Developed areas ( Europe and the USA) were not really that different from today with a wide selection of VOR and NDBs . Off the beaten track - Asia, Africa and South America , VORs were very much less common and the bulk of aids were NDBs - in Russia this still applies. Over water and sparsely settled areas such as Saharan Africa the norm was astro navigation with a bubble sextant , and of course the same applies in the polar regions where compasses are wholly unreliable , and virtually all long distance aircraft up to the introduction of INS with the 747 in 1970 were equipped with an astrodome or periscope to enable sights to be taken

In the fifties at least, they often used to time some of the flights so certain sections of the Sahara would be flown at night to use astro navigation.

Developed areas ( Europe and the USA) were not really that different from today with a wide selection of VOR and NDBs . Off the beaten track - Asia, Africa and South America , VORs were very much less common and the bulk of aids were NDBs - in Russia this still applies. Over water and sparsely settled areas such as Saharan Africa the norm was astro navigation with a bubble sextant , and of course the same applies in the polar regions where compasses are wholly unreliable , and virtually all long distance aircraft up to the introduction of INS with the 747 in 1970 were equipped with an astrodome or periscope to enable sights to be taken

Very interesting, thanks for the info.

Garry Russell wrote:In the fifties at least, they often used to time some of the flights so certain sections of the Sahara would be flown at night to use astro navigation.

Gary,
I actually have been doing that for my long range flights over water. I time the arrival to about 30 minutes into full daylight so that I can navigate most of the time with the stars. For the Antartica flights, I have a solar compass gauge that helps me with directions using grid navigation, but can only work on full daylight so hence the daylight arrival necessity. By that time I should be very close to a radio nav aid or able to use pilotage anyway; now if bad weather and no radio aids, then that is trouble... .

The reason why I was asking this question was because I want to fly one of the segments as shown in the video. The Enteebe to Livingston leg looks interesting, but wanted to fly it the way it used to be flown in those days (with the Comet of course). I planned for a direct route, using celestial nav as the main check and what ever NDB's were available in those days as I assume they might have been. Some period nav charts woudl be really nice to have, I wonder if anybody might have one of those around to make a scan .Thanks for your help,
regards,
Macs

An additional aid were Ocean Stations, usually naval ships patrolling fixed locations at sea to provide NDB and DME navigation aids. They were generally close enough to land stations or each other to allow for dead reckoning navigation between stations. Made long over water trips a bit easier on the crew.

I realise I am resurrecting a very old thread but I have a text file of instructions on how to simulate astral navigation in MSFS.

I would be delighted to share this with anyone who wishes to become not only a sim pilot but a sim navigator.

The .txt file is 12 Kb or can be zipped, anyone care to host the file I will provide it, an interesting read and even more interesting to fly and navigate that way.

Hello!

I'd like a look at that, I'm a navigator at heart, this pilot stuff is just extra!!
My cadets think I'm mad when I explain that Air Nav is the most exciting subject they'll learn!

Paul

I flew Entebbe to Lusaka and then on to New Salisbury in those days (1953)...However, I was in a single seat Venom FB1 and I only had a map on my lap and no other nav aids

Sorry that is not very helpful but in those days I didn't know what a Radio Compass looked like and had never heard of a VOR!

Probably not of much interest but some pictures of those flights (Operation Longtrek) are here in my website:-

http://www.petermcleland.com/logbook_001.htm