Long Range flight planning/navigation of pre-computer era

[Sidestick_n_Rudder]

Hi!

I'd like to learn the ways our predecessors were using to plot routes and navigate in pre-computer and pre INS era - especially in remote/oceanic areas, e.g. when flying Constellations across the Atlantic, or the Pacific.

How were the flighplans built? What methods of navigation did they use over the oceans? What kind of charts were used?

Can anyone suggest any good navigation handbook of the previous era? Any good online resources? I already got myself a sextant and found a couple of marine navigation courses, but looking for something more aviation-specific....

[Tu.114]

For fuel planning, there were integrated range tables, showing how much fuel would be needed to take a certain aircraft mass a certain still air distance.

If I remember correctly, the plans were calculated beginning with the mass at intended landing (ZFM plus alternate/final reserve fuel). One would then enter the tables to look up the fuel required from the last waypoint to the destination, note it down, add its weight to the previous aircraft weight, and then look up the fuel required to carry that now increased mass from the next waypoint uproute to the present one.

That way, one would work through the planned route from landing to takeoff, adding fuel and weight on each waypoint, until one would reach the airport of departure. Then, a departure addon would be added to the sum of the fuel required, and there was the planned burn for the route. Add contingency and taxi fuel as needed, and you have the minimum block.

A good thing we have computers now...

[john_tullamarine]

A good starting point would be a couple of books -

Flight Planning
G D P Worthington Pitman ISBN 273-42424-6

Air Navigation
P V H Weems - don't have my copy to hand so I don't have the ISBN details.
not sure if this is still reasonably available but you might look at
https://archive.org/details/airnavigation00weem
or run some searches in the usual second hand book sites.

[noflynomore]

Tu114 describes the fuel planning - as per my ATPL exams in 1994.

Plotting charts again as per Nav Plotting training in those exams. ie whichever projection best suited your route. Mercator, Transverse Mercator or Polar Stereographic the main ones iirc. Choice depended on whether you wanted to fly rhumb lines, GT Circle or polar routes. Charts tended to be chosen to allow your route to be plotted as a straight line.

Outbound Nav was VOR and finally NDB to their max range, oceanic en route Decca, loran, Consol etc as available, failing which dead reckoning until you picked up (usually) a big coastal NDB, maybe a shipping beacon, for your landfall. Then fine up the landfall and VOR/NDB to destination. En route starsights would be used weather permitting to improve on the DR plot.

The S African service from Cape Town I think to Buenos Aires across the S Atlantic was one of the longest out of nav and VHF range and landfall errors with no starsights due to cloud could be 100 miles out but this was planned for. Still, described as pretty nerve-wracking by those that did it! The 707 and it's inertial platform put paid to all this, but clearly many airlines persisted in using these methods as backup for decades more, and the CAA seem to have been very slow in noticing they are somewhat dated now!

Did the use sun sights? I don't know but imagine a good Nav would. Lunar sights probably a bit adventurous when airborne.

Bear in mind this requires a bubble sextant, a marine one simply can't work in an aeroplane. The bubble effectively provides an artificial horizon.

[FE Hoppy]

One carried a navigator and flight engineer to take care of maths. Allowing the pilots time to contemplate the more vexing problems of where to have dinner on arrival and whether to complete the crossword now or later.

[LeadSled]

FE Hoppy,
Quite so, and as it should be, and all very civilised.
And using the Affretair ( have I spelt that right?) SSB operator, wonderful lady, to make the table booking when you were going to be late.
Tootle