Aeronautical Charts "FI" identification beacons
Originally Posted by ShyTorque
The red one at RAF Newton (located at ground level on the south side of the airfield) was still working for some years after the airfield closed. There’s no sign of it now though. Hopefully it’s gone to a museum because it had been the only “nav aid” at Newton.
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The cupola over the RAF College main hall houses the last operational aerial lighthouse in the UK, a legacy from days when RNAS aircraft operated between the east coast and Cranwell (HMS Daedalus).
In the 1920s and 30s, ahead of radio navigation aids, a network of aerial lighthouses had been set up to guide aircraft at night. In the dome is a light, which, in the early days, could be seen as far as thirty miles away as the UK’s most inland lighthouse. The modern light is not so powerful and scans at 15 rpm.
copy and paste from this:
https://www.cranwellian-ian.com/ewEx...%20Copy%29.pdf
In the 1920s and 30s, ahead of radio navigation aids, a network of aerial lighthouses had been set up to guide aircraft at night. In the dome is a light, which, in the early days, could be seen as far as thirty miles away as the UK’s most inland lighthouse. The modern light is not so powerful and scans at 15 rpm.
copy and paste from this:
https://www.cranwellian-ian.com/ewEx...%20Copy%29.pdf
Avoid imitations
Originally Posted by chevvron
Apart from the CADF/DRDF.
We could otherwise perhaps include the steam plumes from the power stations on the river Trent bubbling through the cloud layer below and asking for true bearings from other airfields in that area.
Originally Posted by ShyTorque
I’m well aware of those, having done QGH letdowns (some quite good, some definitely not, as in “I don’t recognise this place, can you see an airfield?”), but I wouldn’t consider them Navaids in the usual, pilot interpreted sense, any more than a ground based radar is.
Fun times!
Avoid imitations
But it depended more on the skill of the controller, rather than the pilot, to make it a good one.
