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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 27, 2015 7:48:11 GMT -5
Hello!
This is my first my first post in this forum however I have a particularly strong interest in aviation topic for quite a long time already and I am a hardcore flight simulation enthusiast and a student pilot in real life.
Anyway back to the topic question. I always noticed that while most aircraft of the era feature all the complex navigator workstations and navigators in their flight crews some American aircraft do not particularly some designs by Douglas and Boeing. As I understand that is the specific of the American flying where most if not all airways were always equipped with easy to use navaids that pilots could cope with themselves? But how about the same aircraft flying over Europe where navaids outside of the airport areas are not as common till the present day or in polar regions or most importantly over the ocean where complex navigator calculations and equipment are a must?
British aircraft featured navigator positions well into the jet age for example or Russian aircraft featured really very complex navigator positions right until the introduction of automated inertial navigation systems but American aircraft often require just the pilots and the flight engineer. How is that kind of thing actually possible?
I heard that airlines carried navigators on transatlantic flights or trained one of the pilots to work as a navigator but what kind of techniques or tools they used for that? In this example there were still long range aids or beacon ships but what about other places?
I like learning navigation tricks and techniques so it would be very interesting to know how it all worked.
Thank you for your responses!
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Post by chris_c on Jun 27, 2015 10:09:32 GMT -5
Hi. A vast topic but one covered in some detail around the Forum. I would strongly suggest starting by reading the Propliner Tutorial found here: Propliner TutorialThen go here and scroll down to the heading "THE FOUR PHASES OF AVIATION HISTORY": SM-73 TutorialLastly a visit to the archives will satisfy a great many of the remaining questions that you might have but it takes some digging to find specifics. It's worth the effort though. Article ArchiveGood Luck and Welcome Aboard. Chris
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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 27, 2015 12:30:00 GMT -5
Thank you for a warm welcome and a quick answer!
From the documents that you suggested I have already read most of the propliner tutorial and I find it quite confusing and in some places maybe even quite contradictory to the historical facts that I at least thought to know well. What would you say about the idea that is extensively expressed there about legally restricting the instruments available to the flight crews because they were not trusted to stick to official airways? I find that hard to believe and could not find particular examples of such legislature either in the cockpits of aircraft or by looking directly for that legislature. Also I think that would actually reduce the flight safety by making it easier to loose the orientation because of the reduced situational awareness.
However what it does not do is teach any practically useful skill in navigation instead suggesting to use default simulator tools assuming your navigator does the work and tells you what to do. Actually reading that bit is what made me post the question in the first place. That looks like cheating for me just because doing the navigation myself is interesting for me and there is not much stuff to do for the most of the flight anyway if you just restrict yourself to being the pilot only. Anyway I will read the other document from your post and see if it can answer my questions more extensively.
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Post by Dennis the menace on Jun 27, 2015 12:58:04 GMT -5
Hi,
If you are referring to the workload or complexity of either the navigator's position, or the flight engineer's position regarding aircraft used in FS, then I may have an answer for you. As for the actual aircraft, that's an entirely different story.
As a close friend of Tom, we have spoken on this subject many times. The American aircraft for FS, mainly the Douglas and Convair in particular, were designed this way on purpose.
I agree with Tom's opinion on this - I want to spend the majority of my time being a pilot and actually engaged in the piloting of the aircraft, not in being a flight navigator or a flight engineer.
The panels for these aircraft assume that you have a full crew in your cockpit with other members doing their assigned tasks. Thus your job as the pilot has the peripheral workload reduced. You can now stick to your job, which is being just the pilot.
Other aircraft I have seen have such overly complicated panels, with such a high workload of tasks that are normally done by separate crew members like the navigator or flight engineer, that one must assume that whoever built those panels thinks these aircraft only had a one man crew, and thus, you have to do the complete workload of 4 or 5 persons all alone. That's just too much to deal with. Flying in FS should be a fun thing, not ton of never ending task work with a bit of piloting thrown in here and there if you find the time for it (my own opinion).
In short, its because we want our aircraft somewhat easy and fun to fly, because we want to be just pilots!
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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 27, 2015 15:33:20 GMT -5
I am actually about doing the navigator job myself. I love aircraft with those complete complicated panels.
The question here is all about trying to get a general idea of what kind of equipment those aircraft had or have in real life and what techniques are used with those combinations of equipment. Just it looks like some aircraft did not have any equipment like that on top of that standard general aviation suite at all. Not just the flightsim panels but historic descriptions and any other kinds of sources all contribute to this impression.
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Post by emfrat on Jun 27, 2015 17:41:17 GMT -5
If you search at Avsim for bubble sextant you will find a simulation of the actual equipment used. A search for radio range will bring up simulations of various early radio aids.
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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 27, 2015 18:40:41 GMT -5
Does the propliner tutorial mentioned above say a few times that they did not use sextants a lot? Indeed many classic propliners did not even have sextant ports. Or am I understanding something wrongfully here?
What aircraft do you mean when saying they had complex navigator stations in real life but simplified panels in the sim?
Because original question was about aircraft such as Douglas four engine family that did not even require a navigator as a crewmember at all according to the type certification papers. Well even a flight engineer was not always required not to mention a radio operator as in the Connie or many other such aircraft.
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Post by chris_c on Jun 27, 2015 21:53:57 GMT -5
I think that you'll find what the Propliner Tutorial states is that regularly scheduled commercial oceanic flights by celestial navigation alone was not practical for safety reasons. PanAm used navigators even after the B707 was introduced and their DC-6B and DC-7 fleet certainly employed them on the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific segments. Trans Canada Airlines and BOAC used navigators on their North Stars, Argonauts and the latter's Britannias and DC-7Cs but in most cases, celestial was used in conjunction with LORAN, radio direction finding (RDF), ocean stations, ded reckoning, pressure pattern and other techniques. I would say that the presence of a navigator was never an aircraft certification issue but was instead a route regulatory requirement until the days when inertial navigation systems reached the necessary reliability.
The versions of the KMTG panels for the Douglas family should have a basic navigation station.
British South American Airways used celestial and ded reckoning navigation almost exclusively and they had two Avro Tudors disappear over the Atlantic and an Avro Lancastrian fly into Mount Tupangato in the Andes so what FS Aviator wrote, referring to BSAA on several occasions probably makes sense.
As mentioned above, the Radio Range and Bubble Sextant addons are great aids to navigation in flight sim.
Chris
Edit: I found a copy on my HD of a memo sent to PanAm management by Fred Noonan (of Amilia Earhart fame) in April 1935 where he writes that only when combined with a competent ded reckoning plot and accurate radio direction finding was celestial navigation suitable for long over-water flights. By the time PAA begin scheduled trans-Pacific service they had pushed the range of their RDF navigation out to 1200 NM in at least some weather conditions. In most cases the Clipper flying boats were in constant radio contact with PAA ground stations for most or all of the longest leg, San Francisco to Hawaii. There's a gauge out there that you can add to your planes' panel, that simulates this; I think you'll find it a The Old Hanger downloads site.
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Post by Defender on Jun 28, 2015 4:49:02 GMT -5
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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 28, 2015 5:06:12 GMT -5
Chris
I thought it says it was impractical because it is too slow to be accurate in a moving airplane. I will read it again though looking for that issue specifically! Also where did they actually stand or sit in the cockpit without a purpose built sextant port to take measurements?
Regarding those disappearances does not it look like just human errors? What do you think about it from that point of view? Like could it happen anywhere regardless of the circumstances?
So flying a certain route with whatever aircraft type always officially requires a navigator even if that overrides the fact that generally a certain aircraft is certified for commercial operations without a navigator? That is interesting to know.
By radio direction finding do you mean that ship style system with a huge rotating high frequency ground antenna which attempts locating the airplane by a telegraph transmission and transmits the bearing back?
Sorry I did not understand what is KMTG? Where was the navigator station in the cockpit of those liners? Next to the radio rack behind the flight engineer?
Thank you very much for the gauges advice! So in case of a non simplified panel would the navigator station and equipment resemble that of a Stratocruiser?
Bill
Thank you for the links I like things like that!
So I guess you already answered my question about the location of the navigator in the cockpit!
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Post by Defender on Jun 28, 2015 5:34:10 GMT -5
Don't be too concerned about the certificated crew numbers. That's just a legal minimum. So from Chicago to New York there's no need for a navigator.
I'm not sure, but there might have been other regulations covering ocean flights or remote areas. It gets complicated of course because many pilots were also qualified navigators.
Bill
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Post by chris_c on Jun 28, 2015 9:28:15 GMT -5
Apologies. KMTG = Ken Mitchell/Tom Gibson, the brains and talent behind a series of panels for the Douglas tubeliners. These should show up in your FS installation as KMCC, presumably for Ken Mitchell/CalClassic. Tom Gibson is of course our host and the man behind California Classics and we all owe him a tremendous debt. As for RDF, it could very well mean what you describe and there's a gauge out there that can be added to a panel that allows you to tune manually and then calculate the necessary heading. In Europe it was more common to request a bearing from several ground stations. The aircraft would transmit a lengthy RT (Radio-Telegraphy - Morse Code) signal and the ground station would reply with the bearing to the plane. Two or more of these bearings provided a position only several minutes old. A good free electronic book about British aviation in the 1930's in *.pdf format is Flying Empires by Brian Cassidy that tells the story of the Short Empire flying boats of Imperial Airways. It contains all sorts of useful nuggets of information on subjects like aerial navigation, route surveys, regulations (or lack thereof) and other topics and can be downloaded here: Flying EmpiresChris
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Post by volkerboehme on Jun 28, 2015 16:20:36 GMT -5
Hi,
keep in mind that minimum crews are just that. Actual crew size might increase depending on actual flight requirements.
Classic twin-engined aircraft were usually flown by a crew of 2, but increase in engine complexity required an additional flight engineer for the 4-engined planes. It appears that Douglas actually wanted a crew of 2 for the DC-4, but had to add a folding FE seat to recieve type certification. The later engenies like the R-2800 and R-3350 certainly were enough of a workload to justify an additional crew member.
The same applies to navigation. Over land, with airways marked by radio ranges or VOR, a twin pilot crew could handle the navigation issues, just as they could in a DC-3. No need to carry a FE from NY to Florida, Eastern Air Lines even saved the expense for an autopilot. It's a different sory if you're flying over uncharted and unmarked territory. A navigator would be useful to get bearings from land or (weather) ship based station that might have direction finding equipment with a much larger base and precision compared to anything that could be mounted on an aircraft. A radio operator would be helpful as well.
The DC-3 was designed to be flown commercially by a 2-man-crew, but the USAAF used it with a crew of 5, adding navigator, radio operator and crew chief. Once you venture into uncharted territory, you may need a navigator. It doesn't mean you need to do it yourself, and, mot importantly, you must not neglect flying the aircraft in the first place. The S-73 manual shows how you can easily simulate a competent navigator by using the GPS gauge. The choice of how to make a fix is up to the navigator, either by getting a bearing from a ground base or ship, operating LORAN equipment or the like, taking a celestial bearing since no better or quicker alternatives are available, or operating any of the other nav equipment that might be on board.
Therefore, extra nav/radio crew would be helpful on a transcontinental flight or any long-distance flight outside of the US or Europe.
So much about navigation - make sure you learn how to fly the aircraft in the first place. The Connies based on Manfred Jahns models require slightly more FE work than the Douglas types in FS, but usually, there are shortcuts to keep it to a minimum. You may ask your FE to go to rich mixture before climb and go back to lean mixture after it by clicking a simicon.
Best regards, Volker
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Post by nikdunaev on Jun 28, 2015 17:31:09 GMT -5
Thank you everybody for your detailed answers!
And by the way who is a crew chief? I always thought it is the job for one of the pilots to be the captain?
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Post by rally on Jun 28, 2015 21:27:10 GMT -5
Chris I thought it says it was impractical because it is too slow to be accurate in a moving airplane. I will read it again though looking for that issue specifically! Also where did they actually stand or sit in the cockpit without a purpose built sextant port to take measurements? Know most propliners have a clear dome somewhere above the cockpit? The sextant was fitted to a frame within that dome. Without that dome, or a port such as was fitted to later aircraft, you couldn't use the sextant. The DC-6B's "continental" and "intercontinental" versions can be told partially by the presence or absence of that astrodome. In continental service you could navigate completely by radio bearings, so the astrodome was not necessary.
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