Listened to many a QGH at RAF Newton when my dad took me there as a boy circa 1963 - in those days the DF equipment was manually operated by a man in a caravan at the other side of the aerodrome so when the a/c transmitted he would turn the aerial around to get a nul and then shout the bearing down the intercom to the controller!

The joke I heard about QGHs was the guy in the Meteor that got bored and climbed to FL 480 for recovery - the controller instructed the aicraft to climb to FL 500 (knowing full well the a/c would not go any higher!) and report level for homing!! LOL

"A spring loaded switch could be used to select QTE (True Bearing). "

Which is why we always said "True Bearing, True Bearing, True Bearing. Wherever Approach, ABC12, request True Bearing" (rather than just "Anywhere Approach, ABC12, Request Steer") as it gave the Air Trafficker time to reach up for the wiggly-worm switch. Since we navigated over 8/8th cloud using only UDF and Eureka DME, the ATCOs were pretty nimble with their True Bearings back then!

IIRC, there was a mast near Melton Mowbray which was 222 deg True from Cranwell - too good to resist!

And the students who agreed to hold at various points around the compass; when the ringleader pressed the tone button, it meant "Game on"...

1st Student "True Bearing...."
2nd Student "True Bearling...."
3rd Student "True Bearing."
1st Student "Wherever Approach..."
2nd Student "(Fake C/S)..."
3rd Student "Request True Bearing"



:E

Shouldn't that be 10/10th cloud ? ;)

I did many a QGH into Newton in the 'Dog, no compass and speechless-and then in the later days it was a "radar to QGH" which were a bit simpler as you were fed in by Cranditz (I think, may have been Waddo) and put on the inbound leg, the Newton QGH controller then just had to keep you there!

And to answer an earlier post all the DF kit I've used is changeable from QDM to QTE, most of us have it set to QTE as it relates better to the radar screen; which is why I'm a bit miffed that CAP413 was changed so that we don't get the QDMx3 bit now...grrr