[time-nuts] Loran C sounds

[Neville Michie]

Australia never had LORAN. At one stage I think a Decca system was  
trialed, but never installed.
We had a system of secondary radar called DME from the late 50s -  
early 60s. A randomised pulse pair was sent out from the plane and  
was received
by a beacon at the airport. The beacon digested it for 14 odd  
microseconds and sent out a reply pulse. The two way delay was displayed
in nautical miles on a cockpit indicator. The range was 200+ miles at  
VHF and the pulse pairing could interrogate other beacons by changing  
pulse spacing.
With three beacons and a compass how could you get lost?
I do not know how shipping located themselves.
cheers, Neville Michie

On 14/02/2010, at 5:36 PM, Robert Berg wrote:

> I believe he's referring to the Fairchild A-10A bubble sextant,  
> originally produced in the 1940s.  I used a periscopic sextant in  
> the KC-135, an improvement over the hand-held, or dome-mounted  
> bubble sextant, but I never used any sextant in the Fairchild  
> Republic A-10A "Warthog" I subsequently flew.  Interesting  
> coincidence with nomenclature.  Using a sextant in my single-seat  
> Warthog would have been a trick!  I confess to having drooled over  
> Loran C while serving as a nav in SAC.  When I eventually installed  
> Loran C in my personal Mooney aircraft, I was quite pleased with  
> its performance, but there's no question that GPS has eclipsed  
> Loran in many ways for global navigation.  Strangely enough, the  
> only Loran receiver I saw operationally in the USAF was Loran A, in  
> the KC-135Q, to improve navigation for rendezvous with the SR-71.  
> It was quite a dinosaur, even in the '70s.
>
> Matt Osborn wrote:
>> A hog driver and time-nut; heck of a combination.  I kept my feet on
>> the ground back in the '60s. but always had my spirits lifted when
>> Spooky showed up.
>>
>> Heard you guys flew the wings off those planes. Boeing is replacing
>> all 242 wing sets for another 20  years of service.
>>
>> Thanks for your service, Peter.
>>
>> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:29:39 -0800, Peter Putnam
>> <pico.2008 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> My A-10 aircraft
>>
>> -- kc0ukk at msosborn dot com
>>
>
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