Some quite good ideas there - so it's now off to 'landlubber', which leads us to 'lubber-line' which, on earlier compasses was the line you rotated to the HDG RQD, so you could then keep the needle aligned to. It was usually considered a safe bet to fly in 'a line' from A to B, using your 'lubber' but, one thing and another led to that not always working, especially when we flew long distances over deserts, sitting outside ( tried that lately?
)so, particularly useful to locate fuel ' dumps', we got in some practice for digging canals and trenches ready for the Great( not that great, actually <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> )War by persuading local farmers to plough straight trenches from, say, Wadi-el-Jawant to Port-an-Lemon - and we just flew along them, nice and easy <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> Along came Imperial, then British Airways , BOAC and the rest and they numbered their Routes as 'Lines' - I forget them now but I think, as example, No 3 Line may have been to ME OR SA. Flying Boats were introduced because the die on the water kept dissipating and crews ended up in the wrong places, also the 'underwater' trenches soon filled in - no problem with fuel s.tops - just land - however, it may take the company launch a few days to reach you with the jerry-cans and the weight of allowances in old pence was prohibitive. Astro sort of helped until it came out of the ATPL syllabus and they then got rid of Navigators and with no Wireless/Radio Officer, inertial and other things not yet invented - people started to enjoy surprise sojourns in unexpected places. Then, along came Bombers - following the commercially dug lines, dropping their eggs and following them back home, with the other side doing exactly the same. So, the 'lines' were all dug up, put on the backs of camels, not designed by Tommy, or maybe they were - carted off to the local soukh and bartered, or sold - some ending up as early European motorways. The rest will be continued in the book, followed by the film - later!
. .Lines then were adopted for rosters, washing, dancing and all sorts after that.Anyone know 'toe the line' <img src="confused.gif" border="0">