Word: pilote
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...changing all that. Operating at very high frequency, they are entirely free from static. They do not send out restricted beams but can tell any plane within their range (50 miles or more, depending on altitude) in what direction it is heading in relation to the station. The pilot need not listen to wearying dots and dashes in his headset. All he has to do if he wants to fly toward the omnirange is to tune to its frequency and then watch a needle on his instrument board. When the needle is ver tical, the plane is headed toward...
Hitched to the omnirange is another pilot-comforter: the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment). If the pilot wants to know how far he is from a certain omnirange, he turns on a transmitter that sends out a coded signal. When this reaches the omnirange, a repeater answers like an echo. An automatic device on the plane measures the time between the signal and the echo. It turns this interval into the distance in miles and "displays" it on a dial. This gives the pilot a perfect "fix." He knows his direction and distance from the omnirange. Therefore he knows exactly where...
...Course. The pilot of a fully equipped airliner will not even have to take such fixes. Another device, the course-line computer, will do the worrying for him. He merely selects (by setting a dial) the course he wants to follow within the territory of a certain omnirange. The gadgets do the rest, measuring continuously both distance and direction and digesting the information electronically. All the pilot has to do is watch the magic needle. As long as it is vertical, he is on his preset course. He can fly where he chooses, selecting the most direct route and avoiding...
...considers the system merely "transitional." The ultimate control system, which will become necessary as air traffic gets denser, will keep the planes moving like railroad trains on a "block system." Each plane will keep to a well-marked "track" in space. Signals on the instrument board will tell the pilot whether the block ahead is clear and whether the next plane behind him is treading on his tail...
...cancer. In order to make the compound artificially, Winegard had to work with an unstable chemical compound called diazomethane; it is a deadly, odorless yellow gas that can be inhaled without giving a warning sensation of choking. No antidote is known. On Thanksgiving Day he finished his first pilot synthesis at Philadelphia's Lankenau Hospital Cancer Research Institute, did it again a week later...