Word: vor
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Pilots are particularly concerned about interference with the circuitry that picks up radio signals from the so-called VOR (visual omni-range) network -- hundreds of cone-shaped navigation beacons scattered across the U.S. Automatic flight-control systems depend on clear VOR signals to land planes safely when visibility is poor. But some of that VOR equipment has been behaving strangely of late, occasionally causing aircraft on autopilot to veer sickeningly out of control...
...have been lost -- so far. But TIME has obtained a stack of pilot reports linking a series of "anomalies" to a wide variety of electronic gadgets, from laptop computers to Nintendo Game Boys. In one striking example, a plane flying out of Chicago started veering off course while its VOR dials dimmed and danced around. When the passenger in seat 9-D turned off his laptop, the report states, the "panel lights immediately brightened dramatically and all navigation aids returned to normal...
...most part, Britons refrained from drawing parallels between the success of the S.A.S. assault and the failure of the American attempt to rescue the U.S. embassy hostages in Iran, but the point was inescapable. Newspaper editorials, though glowing with patriotic fer vor, noted the vast logistical differences between the two operations. As the Lon don Sun put it in a headline: O.K., SO WE WON, BUT LET'S NOT MAKE TOO MUCH NOISE ABOUT...
Cyclopean Breast. Even when a Spanish painter lived away from Spain, he could keep a peculiarly Iberian fla vor. Such was the case with Ribera, who spent most of his working life in Italy, becoming the most gifted of Caravaggio's followers and the best artist in 17th century Naples. His portrait of Magdalena Ventura, the bearded lady of the Abruzzi, exposing one cyclopean breast as her worn husband looks on, belongs to the same Spanish tradition of dispassionate curiosity about freaks as Velasquez's court dwarfs and idiots...
...beauty of the system is its inherent simplicity. No longer will pilots have to zigzag their way along radio beams from one VOR station to another until they finally reach their destination. Instead, the R-Nav computer will enable them to use the signals from existing stations to set up their own straight-line "phantom" path with waystations that will guide them directly from one airport to another. (Ground controllers will still have to approve the route and monitor the flight to avoid conflict with other planes.) Furthermore, R-Nav will relieve bottlenecks near airports. Aircraft will be able...