Light beacons

[dutch11]

I've been wondering if it was possible to recreate the light beacons used on airways in the US. I'm guessing that MSFS won't allow anything like the distance the beacons are visible from in real life, but I was wondering if anyone knew for sure.

[jesse]

Dutch, I may be wrong, but I believe that Tom covered this in one of the old forum entries some time ago. I don't remember exactly which subject matter it was, but I think it might have been during the early discussions of setting up the Adcock four leg radio range stations.

Jesse

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

The closest you can get that I know about is to put default airport beacons in the scenery (you can use the military or helicopter choice so they don't flash white and green). They are visible about 20 miles away, as I remember, if you scale them up. I'm sure you could create a beacon in GMAX with multiple LOD's (levels of detail) that makes the beam quite large when you are quite far away, but I'm not sure how that works.

[dutch11]

The main concern is the range that airport beacons are visible in FS. They can only be seen about 15 miles out give or take. For navigation beacons, that would be almost useless. I don't know if it's possible to make them visible any farther out.
In real life flying, it is astonishing how far they are visible from. In my neck of the woods, if you take off from Billings on a night flight, once you get high enough, you can see the Livingston beacon easily. You could probably see the beacon at my home airport (KBZN) just as easily, but the Bridger Mountains are in the way. The distance from Billings to Livingston is about 75 miles. They're obviously not much use in IFR weather, but here it is VFR most of the time. I don't know if there is any way to reproduce that in FS9.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

I increased the size of the beacon by 3X and found I could see it about 21 NM away. But I couldn't get it visible any further out. I predict this is probably the limit for all scenery objects...

Sorry,

[weberjf]

Dc3 Airways as a "Nite Mail Route" charter that includes beacons. It is at www.dc3airways.com/flights/routes/night_mail.htm

[Deleted]

Hello,

DL'ed the beacons from DC-3 airways, and am presently flying the first leg of the transcontinental mail route, from Linden, NJ, to Bellefont, PA, in a Condor. The beacons are placed from 10 to 20 nms apart, and in good VFR conditions are quite easy to pick up, if you can pick them out from the airport beacons. They are a triple lens arrangement, 2 white and 1 green.

Rotorpilot

[jesse]

???I have not checked out the beacons but I wonder...did you notice whether or not they also had the course lights?

Jesse

[dutch11]

Evidently, they don't. They are airport beacons set up to replicate the navigational beacons. I have an old sectional chart from the early 40's (it came with an old high school aeronautics textbook dated 1942 that I bought in Virginia City) that has the old Green Airway No. 3 on it (it is a Des Moines sectional), and evidently the beacons are Morse coded, just like NDBs and VORs, which I didn't know until I examined this chart more thoroughly. In this section of airway they are numbers, not letters. I've been trimotoring lately (is that a word), and it would be great to be able to fly those old airways. The farthest distance between two beacons on this sectional is 13.5 nautical miles so my concern about FS limitations on distance really has no bearing. I'm not sure how you would set up beacons to flash with Morse code, but it could probably be done.

[jesse]

Dutch, here is an exerpt from my 1940 Instrument Flying handbook by Weems and Zweng. This will give you a bit more info on the construction of the old CAA Airway beacon system.

BEACON LIGHTS....

The original standard airway beacon is a 24-inch rotating unit of the searchlight type with approximately 1,000,000 candlepower. The new standard airway beacon is a 36-inch rotating unit showing two beams of light separated by an angle of 180-degrees, each beam having a maximum of about 1,250,000 candlepower The airway beacons are so operated as to show six clear flashes per minute. A directional arrow seventy feet in length, which points to the next higher numbered beacon light, is constructed on the ground at the base of the beacon tower. On the feather end of the arrow, or on one side of the roof of the small power house, the beacon-light site number is painted. Beacons are numbered from west to east or south to north, between terminal cities, the numbers corresponding in each case to the nearest ten-mile interval.

In the case of beacon installations where rotating beacons showing only clear flashes (rotating beacons without color screen) are in use, course lights are generally installed to provide the auxiliary color flashes, the presence of landing facilities being indicated by green flashes and the absence of such facilities by red flashes. Two course lights are mounted on each beacon tower, one pointing forward and the other pointing backward along the airway. These course lights are searchlight projectors fitted with red or green lenses and giving a beam of fifteen degrees horizontal and six degrees verticle spread of about 100,000 candlepower. Each course light flashes its code signal, which corresponds to the number of the beacon on the airway. The course lights flash code numbers running from one to ten, and thus indicate successive 100-mile sections of the airway. In order for a pilot to identify positively the number of a beacon site or the miles he has flown along the airway from the code characteristic, it is necessary for him toknow on which 100-mile section he is flying.

In the early days of my flying between 1937 until the FAA dropped the light line system, I flew many hundred hours at night utilizing the beacon system along with dead reckoning navigation. The lights were not too helpful in IFR conditions unless you flew right down on top of them. It was better to get a little more altitude and fly the radio range stations which were not too reliable at night due to the legs shifting. You really had to have your head on straight to keep from being steered into a mountain.

Jesse

[dutch11]

Wow Jesse, no wonder nobody's ever tried to recreate them accurately. I had no idea that they were that involved. I'll have to give it a think.