In the Sixties the Australian DCA flying unit based at Melbourne operated two F27 and a DC3 on flight calibration work around Australia, The British Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
The ILS test included flying inbound at various combinations of full scale fly-up/down and full scale yellow/ blue edges from the outer marker. The old fashioned OBS indication was used by tech crew down the back of the cabin to bias the pilots OBS indicator ILS needles so that from the pilots viewpoint it displayed "correct" tracking - in other words, needles centred.
Naturally we flew VMC with the pilots heads down raw data to 200 ft (no FD in those days) during the checking of the fly up signals and coming in very low at 1.9 degrees and full scale localiser. The pilots OBS was biased to show on course since if the pilot looked outside it was easy to become disorientated at such unusual visual angles.
That experience over the several years I was in the job gave one great personal satisfaction at pure instrument flying skill, particularly as we often flew 20 approaches in an hour from all sides - all raw data.
The sheer love of the challenge of flying raw data meant I could never understand during my latter career as an airline pilot on the 737, why airline pilots shied away from the opportunities that always presented themslves during line flying, to keep in practice at raw data ILS.
Instead, over the years until retirement I observed on a daily basis the increasing trend of almost blind reliance by airline pilots, on the flight director. This eventually led to the children of the magenta line syndrome discussed many times in Pprune pages.
Last edited by sheppey; 5th Aug 2012 at 10:07.