Before there were VORs....

[FlyinRock]

I have one of my old charts in a frame on the wall. It is an old WAC chart and about 20% of the lower right fades from yellow and green to white and in the middle of the white is printed "UNSURVEYED". I was happy to have had it while I was flying in the Amazon Basin in mid-60's. There weren't any NAVAIDS for us to use except the Mark One Eyeball and paying careful attention to position! Found the same to be true while flying in much of Africa in the early 70's. Map reading skills for navigation don't get much attention these days but I still lean on my students to learn what could become a critical skill someday.

 

[yak52driver]

I have one of my old charts in a frame on the wall. It is an old WAC chart and about 20% of the lower right fades from yellow and green to white and in the middle of the white is printed "UNSURVEYED". I was happy to have had it while I was flying in the Amazon Basin in mid-60's. There weren't any NAVAIDS for us to use except the Mark One Eyeball and paying careful attention to position! Found the same to be true while flying in much of Africa in the early 70's. Map reading skills for navigation don't get much attention these days but I still lean on my students to learn what could become a critical skill someday.

I do the same thing with mine. I won't even let them use a GPS until they can fly an XC successfully with just a map and compass. Avionics fail, being able to do it with just the basics can come in handy...

 

[NavAir42]

Way back in the 1920s some of the aviation pioneers campaigned to get cities to paint the town names on rooftops... the pitch was something about modern commerce. Aeronautical commerce improved after pilots didn't have to idle their airplane's engines and get directions by yelling back and forth to someone on the ground.

My grandfather always said that's why lots of smaller town would paint the name on water towers. Not sure if that's entirely true, but it does make sense. They're a lot easier to read from the air than road signs are.

 

[Gatordev]

My grandfather always said that's why lots of smaller town would paint the name on water towers. Not sure if that's entirely true, but it does make sense. They're a lot easier to read from the air than road signs are.

It's definitely true and still used today. On more than one occasion I've navigated by checking a water tower in a town. Like Rocky and Yak, I try to nav off a chart as much as I can. It's not always practical (like in a desert plain or over a southern swamp), but it's good practice. The time that I really appreciate a GPS is when I get into tight airspace.

 

[FlyinRock]

Made me laugh to think of how many times I've dropped down to check road signs, intersections, etc, while searching for a field I was going to spray out in the boonies. Some farm areas are so much the same that you could easy be a mile away from where you thought. Put out some chemical on the wrong field and you are in deep kimchi even if its only part of a pass when you shut it off. It can cost thousands very quickly. Did a lot of my nav in those days with road maps and local plat maps. In fact, one of the first things I did when going out of country was buying Michelin Maps for the area because air charts were frequently not available or inaccurate.
Even with GPS, in many remote places you aren't sure where in hell you are in relation to anything you may be trying to find! Not lost but not certain of where in hell you are either!! Is even more embarassing when you land at the wrong airport................

 

[blackbart22]

Even when the ship had TACAN, the CVSs still had UHF and low freq NDB. The code words were high Trout and low trout. Using the ARA-25 UHF receiver made for a rather hectic approach since you had to switch back and forth on one radio to navigate and communicate.