When did the radio operator disappear?
Can anyone tell me when roughly when long haul aircraft stopped carrying radio operators? Presumably this was related to advances in radio technology with "dial up" radios in the same was as INS replaced the navigator. What happened to radio officers, were they trained pilots like navigators or separate profession like flight engineers in piston days?
I seem to vaguely remember an RAF pilot in the early 70s telling me that he had flown an aircraft with a fixed crystal set which could only transmit on a single or a limited number of frequencies. A civilian ATCO had told him to go away and not come back until he had a proper radio.