Originally Posted by
Andrewgr2
I seem to recall that in the post war period when there were lots of airfields and relatively little street lighting pilots flying at altitude on clear nights could see dozens of Fl beacons at any one time. Can anyone confirm?
Still happens Fl green for civilan and Fl red for military airfields; these are called '
Ident Beacons' as they flash a 2 letter code in morse.
Seldom used in the UK but an
Aerodrome Beacon (ie no ident) flashes either alternate white/green (civil) or alternate white/red (military). If you ever fly over New York in the dark, you will see literally dozens of the white/green ones.
Smaller civil airfields in the UK are allowed to display a flashing white strobe light during their hours of operation but in this case, there must be no other strobe within about a 10nm radius to avoid confusion as there is no ident with this system, it's just for location. Typical examples of these are Fairoaks in Surrey and about 10 miles away, Blackbushe in Hampshire.
One final one, there is a solitary 'lighthouse' which is operated by Trinity House which flashes white. Back in the '30s, many airfields had this, Croydon being one; the last one operating
as far as I know is at RAF Cranwell, on the top of the College building some 30 odd miles from the sea but observable from ships off the coast.