Around 1975 at LHR an elderly Indian gentleman complete with turban would stand in the back of a mini truck and shine a high power pencil beam of light onto the L1011 radome...we would steer to remain attached to this beam and he would positioned us to either the takeoff point on the runway for a LVP departure or to the terminal finger so we could let our passengers off....the ground radar voice steers we had practiced in the sim coordinated and monitored (blind) with the ground run monitor and taxi chart in the cockpit did not in practice work.
On one occassion my friend in his L1011 was positioned several times first to 27L and then over to 27 R for 90mins in an attempt to get legal Takeoff vis...sitting on stand we thought it hilarious as we heard him creeping back and forth at 1.5 kts in the turns and 3 kts on the straight bits following the beam of light...luckily for us there was only one light and one Indian available and most of our passengers did not make it to the airport before we ran out of duty hours.