For those non nav ticket holders, very briefly, an astro fix was done by assuming where you would be when you took the fix and using that position you would precalculate what the altitude (ie angle above the horizon) of three stars would be if you were there from details provided from the Air Almanac and your star table books. You then shot the three stars at the alloted time and compared the actual altitude with what you had precomputed. If the actual altitude was more than you had precalculated, the actual position must be nearer the star than the assumed position by the difference (in minutes of degree expressed as NMs (IIRC!!! it was 45 years ago)help me here someone ). And if less the actual position must be further from the star than the assumed. You then plotted the three lines on your map with ref to your assumed position and hopefully they crossed in a small cocked hat, the centre of which was where you were at the precomputed time.

BOAC taught you how to do this in the 'astro simulator' in Braincrank...this consisted of a plywood box fixed to the ceiling of the class room containing a small ight inside as a star with a sextant mount complete with lever to open the small circular hatch through the hull to the air at 35000' . A three position star fix would be taken by a student and his data used by all the other students to update their assumed position calculations on their chart plot.

In the classroom, the sextant had to be pushed upwards against gravity as you pulled the opening lever as Braincrank was not at 35000' so there was no diff pressure to 'suck' the sextant up. On the aircraft, the sextant had to be more or less 'hung on' to allow a slow docking against the 8.2 diff.


On my first rip as nav under instruction to YYZ, my instructor didn't tell me this (it wasn't ExSp33db1rd I hasten to add, although I did come across him later in the course - and very good he was too!! (That's a beer you owe me if I get to NZ again 'A'.) so when I was invited to 'stick up the sextant' to do the compass check shortly after reaching cruise, I pushed against the gravity I had been used to at braincrank. The sextant shot up to the roof, sucked by the diff, smashed against the plate on the hull and was followed by a tinkling sound of broken optical equipment. It didn't work for the rest of the crossing. Company was called and a spare from JFK sent to YYZ for the return crossing. Company at JFK, said this was the second time in a week they had had to do this - what was going on?

I never found out who the member of my course who had done the same was.

Hobo - yes, 1 nm = 1minute of arc along ( up and down ) the Longitude. I think technically that is supposed to be made at the Equator - but who's counting ?

Except that the difference had to be considered if using a Mercator chart in high latitudes, as the scale expanded towards the Pole.

As we now seem to measure distance in decimals of a minute via iPad GPS, I don't recall if we bothered about any distance less than one mile, which might seem a huge error now, but the scale of the charts we used meant that the thickness of ones' pencil line was almost a mile, anyway, and as our allowed "track error" was 10 nm ( IIRC ) we had a 20 nm "road" at our disposal, so corrections less than 1 nm were irrelevant. You description of Astro plotting is correct.

Will PM ref: the beer, I see that Amazon are considering Drone delivery now !

finncapt - Canada .... Once passed North of Goose Bay Westbound, not having had a fix for some time, en route Detroit I think. After about another hour of no fix capability finally admitted to the Captain that I was "temporarily unsure of my position". Using my presumed best guess he reckoned we were in range of the DEW Line, that line of radar Defence Early Warning stations stationed across Northern Canada in those days, and called for assistance - they couldn't see us !

Eventually a Canadian pilot asked where we thought we were, and having been told asked if I could see a 'spot height' on my chart of 1560 ft. ? ( or whatever it was ) Yes. Well it isn't a spot height, it's a misprint, it's a local broadcast station, try your ADF. Using that I eventually proved that in fact we were only about 40 miles off track - which after a long time without a fix wasn't as bad as it might sound now, it's the uncertainty that gets you wound up.

The mighty US of A Defence Early Warning system never did see us !

Happy Days.

As a national service.e nav. I knew little and remember less. Now our nav tables were cork faced, this hopefully lessening the chances of pencil point breakage. We were taught to use 8H pencils as these drew a fine thin line and could be expected to remain sharp for a couple of hours or more. If turbulence started to cause you punching holes in your chart, you changed down to 6H or even 4H in extreme conditions. HB was only used to sign bar chits!
Now 1 fix every 30 minutes may sound like a leisurely life but far from it. So you have worked out where you were 6 minutes ago and now where you should be 6 minutes later. Unfortunately its time to start again because the whole process will take 24 minutes or if its bumpy and you have to take 2 minute shots of each star, there's only 3 minutes to spare!

I'm a bit confused. How did you put the sextant through the fuselage without a slow depressurisation? I'm just trying to imagine how it worked.

One of my BOAC memories was of the whole crew hiring a mini bus in LA and setting off with a tourist map to find the homes of the stars.

One member of this band of adventurers was a Nav instructor and you've guessed it....we got lost.

I remember expressing my concerns that the next leg of the trip was out in the Pacific to Honolulu and on to Fiji which seemed a bit more complex than finding Marilyn Monroes boudoir:}

Archie Jackson's other book about his flying life is called 'Both feet in the Air'....great read...he's also written a history of Imperial Airways I think. If you can't find them on Amazon then Google second hand aviation books for sale ...I know of a great online company that has tons of great stuff.

Just think of it as another outflow valve.

IIRC, the sextant looked something like a professional camera with a long lense sticking out of it there were no quadrants, or external bits and pieces like on a marine sextant. Think submarine periscopes. It was compact self contained unit. The 2" diameter 'lense/periscope was slid up a tube in the flight deck roof, to the 'hatch'. The lever opening the 2" hatch was pulled and with a hiss, the sextant slid up until until the viewer was clear of the fuselage and various seals made to make it airtight and hiss free. On the way out, the lever was pulled which released the sextant enough to be pulled down past the hatch, which could then be closed by the lever and sealed. The sextant was then lifted down and stowed. A lot simpler to do than this description implies.

Oceanic navigation with sextant aboard a USAF KC-135:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc3rAlCDf54

The two-tone noise at the beginning is someone being called on HF SELCAL. The ground station is Honolulu.
Unlike the B707, KC-135s don't carry a flight engineer (shock horror) so the navigator's position is where the flight engineer's panel would normally be. The navigator's position on the 707 was in a more cramped position at the left rear of the flight deck. Note also the LORAN viewing scope.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of navigating. I was on a course out of Hamble scheduled to become VC10 pilots. There was a parallel course scheduled to become 707 pilots. There was a hold in the pilot training line so it was decided that we should start our Nav training. Only problem was that rostering put us on a 707 nav course and the 707 boys on a VC 10 nav course. Great fun. I seem to remember that the roof profile in the cockpit was different on the two aircraft. The 707 had a small foot stool so you could get higher. This put your nether regions slightly higher. It was not unknown, as you were concentrating like mad on the bubble and faint star, for the A girl to come up and slowly unzip your BOAC regulation uniform trousers.

Some of the Nav Instructors were not the nicest. There was one who would wait until you had done all the checks and while your back was turned would substitute the the power cable you had checked for one he kept which had a hidden cut in it. So there you were, calculations complete, ready to shoot and the sextant would not work. He would try to blame you for not checking everything.

Some of the check navs did not have a sense of humour. As was stated earlier it was OK to get a fix from a Weather Ship - problem was that they had no idea were they were. But once I got a rollicking from the Nav Office because on the day in question, Loran was very patchy, daylight so only the sun (and a couple of clever things you could do with it - no Moon and Venus), and Consul was also patchy that far north. We were following a Pan Am 747, so I used the weather radar to get a range and distance from him, asked for his INS position and then plotted our position. As I said nav Office did not appreciate my efforts.

One of the saviours for some instructors was the ADF. I heard of one who had a nagging feeling about the student's position. He tuned up the Home Service at Droitwich on 200 khz, watched it swing round and told the captain to steer that way whilst he found out where they really were.

Hobo
 

How did you (and your instructor) navigate the outward leg of the trip without an sextant?

Rwy in Sight

with Loran.

BOAC B707 ops in the 1960s
 

There are some images of the sextant and mounting on the VC10 here: http://www.vc10.net/Technical/oddities.html#Periscopes

The 707-336 had a Kollsman sextant. What did the 436 and VC10 have?

After we stopped using sextants on our 707's in Qantas we did a Royal Flight with the Queen. The Royal standard was put through the aperture for the taxy in. Looks great.

The early few 747s in BOAC had Loran by the copilot's right knee because the good old CAA did not trust the 3 Carousel IV INS's fitted (despite Appollo 11 using just one to get to and land on the moon). Copilot had to check INS position with Loran. This soon stopped.

Also the early 747's actually had a sextant mounting. This was eventually used as part of the cockpit smoke evacuation drill. - Although a strategically mounted cent coin held it open enough for the few smokers to have a fag and direct the smoke overboard.

A couple of sextant stories. The first one is folk-law but the second is true as I knew the guy involved;

A flight engineer who had OCD invented a devise using old Hoover pipes to use diff pressure to vacuum clean the flight deck. He fixed one end to the sextant mounting and then opened the flap. Unfortunately the pipe turned inward on itself and disappeared up through the mounting. However it was impossible to release the pipe from the mounting so the pipe flailed around on the upper fuselage for the rest of the flight

One of the navigation instructors had a little party trick. When not on a nav sector he would ask the pupil to leave the flight deck and then do something to the sextant such as remove the bulb, misalign the drums or interrupt the power source. The student would then have to try and sort it out.
Being a fair minded individual, he would then offer the opportunity for the student to do the same to him. After doing this to one student (who has sadly passed away recently) the instructor was unable to get the sextant to work. Whatever he tried, he couldn't see anything. When he gave up the student removed the sextant from the roof. he has drawn over the lens with a chinagraph pencil.

Perhaps beerdrinker can comment on the first story as I've never actually met anyone who witnessed it.

I can remember, shortly after a VC10 had been fitted with twin INSs, being required to do a 20 minute astro fix schedule across the Atlantic to check the accuracy of the INSs. How daft can you get?!!!

'cos no one believed INS would work at first, it was black magic. "In The Beginning" we had an early INS experimental thinggy fitted to the sidewall of the fuselage of a 707 freighter main cargo deck, it measured about 3ft by 1 ft and was full of winking lights and clicking relays, there was a long "boot up" procedure to follow,and I remember being amazed that, having started the thing up on chox, by the time we had got to the end of the runway it had moved 1 mile West and 1/2 mile South ( or thereabouts ) PFM ( Pure F****g Magic). I was impressed.

We treated INS in those days like I now treat a "Glass Cockpit" fitted to a club Microlight that I'm supposed to be an instructor for, i.e. "don't touch anything, and WTF is it doing now ?" I'm told this is what a dog thinks when it sees television ?

I've been told that Air New Zealand fitted a vacuum arrangement to the sextant mounting of their DC-8's. Can't comment.

I think it was a Kelvin Hughes design manufactured by Smiths Instruments ? One difference was that the Kollsman had a mechanical pendulum permanently visible in the viewing chamber, whereas the other one required a bubble to be created by turning a large knob on the side each time, size of bubble you "custom created" had an effect on the viability of the sight, i.e. smaller was more accurate, but harder to "chase" the star. Overall I preferred the Kollsman.

The weather ships had a pretty good idea where they were, they had access to better Loran and navigation equipment than we did, weight not being a consideration for them, they steamed around in a "box" and sent their position out as X and Y co-ordinates of a square grid, which was also printed on our chart, so the morse code ident. would be something like "C(for Charlie, or whichever ship it was,) then-D-5" which put them in a small square, maybe 10 mile sides but as explained earlier this was small beer in the scale of things.

Smart thinking to follow PanAm's INS, except..... Once approaching JFK I was vectored for a visual approach to 22L from Deer Park ( or similar) to follow preceeding traffic, which was number one, a PanAm 707, did I have the traffic in sight ? Yes.

We followed PanAm, who made no attempt to turn on to the centre line and eventually passed through it, I then asked tower if I could make my own interception as I had the runway in sight and preceeding traffic had made no attempt to join. I was cleared to land, then we heard "Err - Kennedy Tower, PanAm One requests vectors to final ". Won one ! Turned out it was an SFO based PanAm crew who were less familiar with JFK then we were - at least that was their story when we met them in Customs.

Yes Airclues. I heard the story of the Flt Eng's vacuum but never met anybody who could confirm it. I think I heard the story after I had left the VC10 and was on the Classic. I seem to remember it was a "bar room have you heard about" story.

Certainly heard stories about the "vacuum cleaner" , a certain 720B operator (not Monarch) had an flt engineer who liked to keep the office clean until on maintenance at Luton it was pointed out that there was pockmark damage to the leading edge of the fin , I think the practice ceased.

Finncapt...twas a BA/ANZ opp IIRC...had a mate who was a boy pilot on it...
One of the first expressions that my father learnt when he arrived in England B4 WW2 was "tight as a bull's arse in June"...which summed up my mate to a T...he used to take a metal detector along and spent the slip in LA beach combing - mostly for pennies and dimes...
He used to dry out his Tea bags along with another guy...how to live well on one of the best salaries in Europe.

Bird House....walls covered with soiled underwear (often with previous wearer's name in felt tip).

Portage Glacier....had one attempt and hit some nasty air so did a 180...dropped down to 100ft and went searching for bears...no sense in making the girls sick (in reality moi playing possum).
Took a flight out to Cordova and took the inter Island ferry back to watch the glacier calving from a different (and safer) perspective.

Returning a hire car in ANC one day, the owner asked if I'd be interested in an all expenses paid ship trip to Juneau to then drive one of his cars back to ANC?

It wasn't mid-winter, but it wasn't mid-summer either and I was a bit nervous of doing the trip solo, and no-one else would accompany me, so passed up the offer. Wish I'd bitten the bullet and done it, now.

Flying TYO - ANC one night, were held at F/L 290 due American being 10 minutes behind at F/L 330,and every "request" to them to maybe climb to 370 was replied to with a brief 'Nope'.

Approaching ANC the vis. was rapidly decreasing, and having passed the ILS Outer Marker it dropped below limits, but being inside the marker were were legal to continue to "have a look". Reaching our Company minima we were visual, so landed O.K. American were still outside the marker and forbidden to continue - so they had to divert to Elmondorf. We larfed.

The Vacuum Cleaner Story
 

Please don't tell me this is a furphy. I seem to recall that it featured in the BA air safety magazine.

...threads of memory...
 

the closest I can offer is 1970-76 during which period I joined BOAC as a Joint Corporations cadet straight from AST Perth with 230 hours total on Cessnas, did the 707- 436 conversion at Prestwick 6 months later and started the FNL licence course in April '73.
By this time there were no "Straight Navs" but both F/Os on the crew held FNLs ( the captain was allowed to let his lapse ). There was no track structure on the N.Atlantic and nav training was conducted both there and up into the Arctic using Grid. Doppler ( limited by only a Polar Path compass system for heading reference ), Loran, Consol, and Astro were all used as available and necessary. Oh, how I miss the Flight Engineer's firm grasp on my inner thigh
approaching the end of a carefully calculated 3 star astro fix as I clung helplessly to the periscopic sextant.......
Can't help much regarding JFK as Newark was the closest I got in later years.....however, I do remember the advent of voice ID on the NY area VORs.
Air Almanacs still available for inspection by arrangement with Her Maj if you're ever passing Taunton way. Fun times...a crew that doubled as Rent-a-Crowd and a table for your dinner

..... and a table for your dinner.

As Capt. JFK - LHR, and having "given" the flying for this sector to the F/O, I decided to put the S.O./ Nav in my seat as we flew up the East Coast towards Gander - this was an early INS trip when we still carried a qualified Nav. Pilot, "just in case", tho' he had normally nothing to do - so I enjoyed my meal at a table instead of balanced on my knee, made it easier to eat the caviar, should the cabin crew have been so kind !

I then noticed that the aircraft was in a positive turn to the right, one does notice these things, and heard the F/O explaining to Gander ATC that "we have a Nav failure".

The early INS would only accept 9 waypoints, and one had to constantly leapfrog from ones passed to insert new ones into the system ahead of the aircraft.

The F/O and S/O occupying the two front seats had been so busy chatting that they had forgotten to do this, so the INS had performed as designed and upon passing waypoint 9 had set course for waypoint 1 - back towards New York !

(Expletives deleted )

Bill Pinnock

Still got that beard by any chance?

Low Vis Navigation
 

In the 60's and 70's smoking on the flight deck (and the passenger cabin) was still allowed. One night I had to navigate a VC10 across the Atlantic with the Captain puffing at a pipe, the F/O smoking a cigar and the E/O chain smoking cigarettes. Trying to plot a position on a loran chart (you'll understand what I mean if you've ever seen a loran chart) wasn't easy in low vis conditions.

Edit;

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=...electedIndex=0

Bill,
I have PM'd you.

Low vis Nav.

Agree, I got quite adept at navigating wearing a full face oxygen mask! The tube wouldn't reach the sextant mounting tho'
Raising the curtain that cut off light from the nav table, and opening the face level air vent, helped a bit too.

Had a Captain who decided to fly on "red only" light selection once, the switch to activate this mode being in his control, and of course the Loran chart required one to identify coloured lines, some red, which promptly became invisible of course. We had a few words about the ongoing navigation accuracy.
I won.

And then of course is the story of the skipper who was in the habit of leaning back and dumping his used tea cup on the 707 Nav's chart. Nav got fed up and sent forward to the pilots a series of heading changes. The effect being he navigated the aircraft around said tea cup. And he logged manoeuvre on his Nav Log: " Altering course to avoid Captain' tea cup"

I am attempting to enlighten everybody regarding the 'hoover storey'.
The individual was an Engineering Officer whose name has been on the tip of my senile tongue for days!
Both DTW (Guess Who) and I have been ruminating about this eccentric character who also relished bringing goldfish back from Nairobi and oxygenating them within their bag whilst airbourne. He also rigged up a feeding contraption via puncre louvres!!
Another act was to open the lower hatch from within the electrics bay, having depressurised the aircraft, and peering out to confirm the wheels were down and locked despite false U/C indications on the Flight Deck.
We will linger over a gratifying amber and the name will flash up in lights!
Watch this space

I will recount some of my navigating epic voyages when I can refill the quill!

Fantastic :ok:

Bingo!

I knew the Amber liquid would release those memory marbles.
With grateful thanks to DTW the Mystery Mechanic is/was Bob Heath

Bird House Bar, AK
 

A few years before it burnt down someone stole the big blue bird effigy mounted on the roof. The cops put out a States-wide alert for it's recovery and iirc it was discovered somewhere in the lower 48, whence it was returned to its rightful place.
One day we went skiing in nearby Alyeska and, unusually, some of the Japanese FA's joined us (they normally hung out with all the other airlines' japanese FA's in Benihana on 5th Ave in Anchorage). Afterwards we arranged to meet at the Bird. One of these girls asked the barmaid - the well-built one alluded to in an earlier post - whether they sold soft drinks or not. "No" came the reply. "What do you sell?" asked our Japanese girl. Whereupon the barmaid, hands on hips, displayed her enormous assets in tactical mode and stated "we sell BOOZE, lady!" :)
The only food available there was a basket of hard boiled eggs, labelled "boneless chicken dinners".

I was a frequent visitor to ANC in the 1980's and we had to do a very basic polar nav course before being let loose, which included a mere brush with Grid Nav. Years later I found myself operating these routes again and we had a reversionary procedure to Grid Nav if the INS's failed. As I was the only one on the fleet who had an inkling of what it entailed I was nominated the instructor! Blind leading the blind, etc.

Blind Pew - you do exaggerate.....

Perhaps ExSp33db1rd and or other 707 experts can advise on another point: for the purposes of the story I'm going to need five seats in my BOAC 707 cockpit. Reading the Accident Report on G-ARWE, I note that there were five crew in the cockpit: Capt, two FOs, FE and Route Check Capt, so presumably five seats was a standard config. Was the nav station behind the jump seat?

Thanks for info.

In essence Flight Deck layouts were similar for both B707's and VC10's. The Nav table was essentially behind the Captain's seat and jump seat was erected in the middle. The VC10 cockpit was enormous and entertained many visitors with much entertainment particularly if navigational duties were not too onerous.
Direct London Bermuda's were conducted in daylight westbound and generally concentrated the mind although occasionally a Sun/Moon/Venus fix was most rewarding. One aspect of navigating the return BDA-LHR was an essential removal of the shades on the sextant used westbound to protect the eyes during observations. Many a lad was confounded Eastbound on the first night fix searching for stars and met by a very black night!
Blacking the eyepiece was another jape generally reserved for a new hostess's invited to peer at Venus. I stress the jokes were very much enjoyed/conducted by all crew and reciprocated all round during those happy days.

Discorde Yes, on the 707 left hand side was capt/jump seat/ nav table with seat in a row and right hand side was f/O F/eng. IIRC, the jump seat was fixed fore and aft and butted up to the nav table, and it couldn't rotate but the Nav and Eng seat could rotate.

I think ??? the eng seat at least could move fore and aft...not too sure if the nav seat could...probably not as the js would be in the way. \\\\\\\\\there wasn't much spare room in the 707 cockpit.While under training as a nav, the Nav instructor used to sit on the jumpseat...where he could peer over your head at the nav table and your chart in a very intimidating way...

I don't know what others did, but the loran charts were masive when folded out, so once I had drawn our planned track on, I would use my square protractor to trim the edges/corners off and end up with a strip about 18" wide which could be used very easily. (Now I think of it, it may have been our very own ExSp33db1rd who suggested this....??

Boxkite

Oh what days - it's all too PC now I imagine.

I remember a trick with cling film and dry ice!!!

Brown milk on landing anyone!!

The longest VC10 trip I did was 28 days - got turned round in Colombo!!

Also Bob Heath, dour Duncan et al - sad when they got rid of Flt Engineers.

In GF it was called Brown Cow!!