Those are modern nav aids.
In the days of the wooden ships and the iron men we only had a radio receiver and flew the airways in the twilight zone of the radio range leg.
And for the final approach we had to find the cone of silence to accurately time the let down.
Not only that but we had to read morse code before we could even take an instrument ride for the instrument rating....then again I'm old...real old.
The ADF was a later invention which made our IFR flying simple.