Word: radar
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Even more puzzling, perhaps, was how Pilot McKenzie found himself in the midst of a storm so filled with hail that the radar of a trailing jetliner detected what appeared to be a solid form in the black clouds-a great, ominous "hook" in the sky. Since the early 1920s, when mail pilots held up a wet finger to see which way the wind was blowing, U.S. aviation has been trying with increasing success to spot weather hazards and route pilots around them. Today's commercial airlines get a steady stream of up-to-the-minute weather reports, including...
...good buddies" are sure learnin' fast how to outfox Smokey the Bear. The sophisticated way to beat speeding tickets is to use a miniaturized radar-emission detector. Mounted on a dashboard, it flashes a light and then sounds a high-pitched beep when the vehicle approaches a radar trap. "This is the fastest-growing area of consumer electronics," says Cy Robinson of a Richardson, Texas, firm called Autotronics that sells "Snoopers" ($89.95) and "Super Snoopers" ($149.95). Super Snooper claims to be able to sniff out "over-the-hill and around-the-corner detection...
Leader in the field is Electrolert of Troy, Ohio, which currently makes some 2,000 of its $90 "Fuzzbusters" a day. Electrolert was founded in 1973 by Dale Smith, a former Air Force research scientist. After being caught in a speed trap, he went home and built himself a radar detector. It was comparatively simple for him, since he was also making radar devices for the police...
...improve the record of flight safety. Every commercial jet?and every private aircraft that operates at altitudes over 18,000 ft.?is equipped with a "transponder," in effect a miniature radio station that sends out the flight number and altitude. These data appear, neatly boxed, on the greenish radar screen of the controller. As the plane moves through the air, the tiny box proceeds by tiny hops across the screen. A pilot can attract the attention of a controller by making his flight data brighten, as though a tiny supernova had flared on the radar...
...have wide spaces between runways and taxiways. They also have excellent air traffic control and emergency equipment. Abroad, pilots like London's Heathrow, Amsterdam's Schipol, Paris' De Gaulle and the Frankfurt airport. These fields, like their American counterparts, have the best lighting, communications and radar equipment available...