Actually it was a controller who gave visibility observations in the
vicinity of the touchdown zone from a car. IIRC most airports only had RVV
at the time.
Al


"Sam Spade" wrote in message
...
B A R R Y wrote:


How about guys in pink shirts standing next to the runway?

In the days before RVR really worked, when the weather was foggy at some
airline airports they had a certified observor standing beside the runway
who provided manually observed RVR readings to the tower via an interphone
link.