Flight Lessons

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: (OXMORON1)
Date: 8/6/03 2:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time

Murphy attacks, things break, power supplies don't..
Try 14+ hours McChord to HI, daylight, nothing worked, even the sextant had a
split bubble, it is too late to get out the book and read. You better have
learned it in training, whatever crew position you hold.

That is always the case.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a "lensatic?"

-Mike Marron


It's a military personal land navigation compass.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: "Paul J. Adam"
Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

I agree with you. It is amazing that every post in this NG on GPS has been
negative; talking about difficulty of use, failures, inacuracies and time
consuming operations.and also making it seem as though every one who used
GPS
was untrained and just generally incompetant.

The problem with GPS is that it works too well while it works. Because
it's quick and easy to program and follow, less care often goes into
checking and planning the route, and often less care gets taken in
double-checking that the real world conforms to what the GPS says.

That is not he fault of the GPS.

the GPS acts up or the information it provides isn't used wisely.

That goes for anything and everything. Not just GPS.

I guess if we had GPS in WW II
we would have lost the war.

With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)

Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy

..

Of course, if the GPS co-ordinates are wrongly calculated, wrongly
entered, or the GPS battery fails midflight, that's a very lost
formation... with no navigators to rescue them.

If you keep the trained navigators and their equipment "just in case",
what benefit is GPS providing?


--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam








Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: "Paul J. Adam"
-Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-
-With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
-little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
-training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
-(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
-
-Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
-

I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?

Or ever, for that matter.


Steve

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: Steve
Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: "Paul J. Adam"
-Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-
-With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
-little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
-training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
-(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
-
-Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
-

I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?

Or ever, for that matter.


Steve




Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
could do an LOP ok.


Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: Steve
-Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-In article ,
-ArtKramr wrote:
--Subject: Flight Lessons
--From: "Paul J. Adam"
--Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
--Message-id:
--
--
--With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
--little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
--training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
--(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
--
--Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
--
-
-I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
-after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?
-
-Or ever, for that matter.
-
-
-Steve
-
-
-
-
-Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
- But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
-some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
-enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
-could do an LOP ok.
-
-

Thanks, Art. I appreciate everything you write. I'm kind of curious for no
good reason; how far would you have had to fly to get a handle on cross-winds?
Assuming the weather guys didn't have any info for you, would you know on an
on-going basis how far you were being pushed sideways, or would you have to fly
a while and compare your dead reckoning with something else? What else would you
have available on a typical mission? (I don't know anything about navigation, you
won't insult me by talking down)

I couldn't help myself, though - when I read your comment next to
the one before it I had this vision of somebody in an office somewhere signing
off on a white paper that said we didn't need navigators anymore because of GPS,
then sending out your B-26 with nobody to work the bombsight.

"Pilot to bombar... --hey! HEY!!"


Steve

In article ,
Steve writes:
In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: Steve
-Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-In article ,
-ArtKramr wrote:
--Subject: Flight Lessons
--From: "Paul J. Adam"
--Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
--Message-id:
--
--
--With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
--little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
--training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
--(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
--
--Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
--
-
-I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
-after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?
-
-Or ever, for that matter.
-
-
-Steve
-
-
-
-
-Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
- But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
-some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
-enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
-could do an LOP ok.
-
-

Thanks, Art. I appreciate everything you write. I'm kind of curious for no
good reason; how far would you have had to fly to get a handle on cross-winds?
Assuming the weather guys didn't have any info for you, would you know on an
on-going basis how far you were being pushed sideways, or would you have to fly
a while and compare your dead reckoning with something else? What else would you
have available on a typical mission? (I don't know anything about navigation, you
won't insult me by talking down)

That's a good question, and, while I'm here, I've got a somewhat
related piggyback question. Art, did you guys use the Norden Sight to
measure drift while navigating to and from the target? Some of the
Navy documents that I've read on the early days of the Norden's
development indicate that that was one of teh things they wanted to
use it as a drfftmeter. From what I know, it ought to work, but since
the only real Nordens I've seen are display items...

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Subject: Flight Lessons
From: Steve
Date: 8/7/03 1:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Thanks, Art. I appreciate everything you write. I'm kind of curious for no
good reason; how far would you have had to fly to get a handle on
cross-winds?
Assuming the weather guys didn't have any info for you, would you know on an
on-going basis how far you were

being pushed sideways, or would you have to fly
a while and compare your dead reckoning with something else? What else would
you
have available on a typical mission? (I don't know anything about navigation,
you
won't insult me by talking down)


We would get winds aloft at briefings. But we flew all our missions in daylight
usually under pretty good conditions and pilotage did us fine, That is where
you look out the window, check with a map and find your wayusually with no
trouble. But we ALWAYS laid out a dead reckoning solution on every mission no
matter what. Also we alway knew what our ETA to every check point was and when
to expect important checkpoints, like the Rhine, The Moselle, the Meuse rivers.
The RAF guys in the heavies flying at night had a nightmare compared to us,

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

In message , ArtKramr
writes
Subject: Flight Lessons
From: "Paul J. Adam"
The problem with GPS is that it works too well while it works. Because
it's quick and easy to program and follow, less care often goes into
checking and planning the route, and often less care gets taken in
double-checking that the real world conforms to what the GPS says.

That is not he fault of the GPS.

No, but it's a human mistake. It's a training issue to make sure that
when the GPS bings off a waypoint, you check a few landmarks to make
sure you're where the gadget says you should be. Currently, that doesn't
reliably happen because people have too much faith in the GPS.

the GPS acts up or the information it provides isn't used wisely.

That goes for anything and everything. Not just GPS.

The trouble is, GPS is too damn useful. Mike Marron wrote eloquently
about how a working GPS can replace most of your flight instruments...
as long as the GPS is working. But it's a low-powered signal from orbit
and it's easily jammed. GPS jamming isn't a feature of civilian life,
but it's a serious military problem. GPS offers much more than any other
navaid I've heard of, no wonder people turn to it first.

It's great kit, but the ground you're flying over / sailing past still
has to have priority - and it's harder than you'd think to make people
believe that.

With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)

Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy

With GPS the pilot can fly to a calculated release point and the
computer will drop the bombs. The bombs can even be GPS-guided (see
JDAM, JSOW et al). Replace the B/N with a machine and hope? Keep him
along for the ride?

I'm not saying "get rid of GPS", it's great kit and well worth using. I
_am_ worried that users depend on it and neglect the skills that would
let them double-check what the GPS display tells them.


(How _did_ B-26 formations bomb? I just realised that I really don't
know. Every aircraft flying final attack with its own bombardier, "hold
formation and drop when leader drops", something else?)

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , ArtKramr
writes
Subject: Flight Lessons
From: "Paul J. Adam"
The problem with GPS is that it works too well while it works. Because
it's quick and easy to program and follow, less care often goes into
checking and planning the route, and often less care gets taken in
double-checking that the real world conforms to what the GPS says.

That is not he fault of the GPS.

No, but it's a human mistake. It's a training issue to make sure that
when the GPS bings off a waypoint, you check a few landmarks to make
sure you're where the gadget says you should be. Currently, that doesn't
reliably happen because people have too much faith in the GPS.

Jesus, you think they can see the ground?