Airway Beacons still in service - interesting article (xpost)

I remember as a kid seeing them at night as I rode in my parents' car through Banning Pass. Here's a piece of a 1945 sectional chart showing the layout of airway beacons (circled in yellow) from Riverside through Banning Pass eastward to Desert Center.

-- Pilawt
 

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Pilawt said:
I remember as a kid seeing them at night riding in my parents' car through Banning Pass. Here's a piece of a 1945 sectional chart showing the layout of airway beacons (circled in yellow) from Riverside through Banning Pass eastward to Desert Center.

-- Pilawt
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That's a good way to spot a route for crossing the pass. I wonder how many are left.....and if you can see them in the daytime.
 
Navigate by beacons? I suppose if I took the horse-drawn carriage to the airport. :)
 
mikea said:
That's a good way to spot a route for crossing the pass.
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It behooves the pilot to be aware of the code being flashed by each beacon, so he is sure which one he is following. I've flown that pass often in daytime and it chills me to think of pilots in the old days motoring along at low altitudes in the dark in there, with 11,000' MSL peaks close by on either side.

-- Pilawt
 
Pilawt said:
It behooves the pilot to be aware of the code being flashed by each beacon, so he is sure which one he is following. I've flown that pass often in daytime and it chills me to think of pilots in the old days motoring along at low altitudes in the dark in there, with 11,000' MSL peaks close by on either side.

-- Pilawt
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Code? I thought they just had a focused beam of light pointing the way the next beacon.
 
mikea said:
Code? I thought they just had a focused beam of light pointing the way the next beacon.
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From the article ejensen posted at the top of this thread:

The course lights, Ferguson explained, are viewable from only one direction. A pilot following the red lights would be led safely through the mountains. The course lights also flash Morse code.

“Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore,” Ferguson said. “But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it.”
​
The Pearson Air Museum here at KVUO has an old airway beacon on display.

-- Pilawt
 
Pilawt said:
From the article ejensen posted at the top of this thread:

The course lights, Ferguson explained, are viewable from only one direction. A pilot following the red lights would be led safely through the mountains. The course lights also flash Morse code.

“Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore,” Ferguson said. “But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it.”
​
The Pearson Air Museum here at KVUO has an old airway beacon on display.
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OK, didn't RTFA good enough. I do grok Morse code. I had an Novice HAM license. It's funny how you can't forget that stuff once you take the plunge.

There's one in the EAA Museum, too.
 
Thanks for posting that. It's a piece of history I wan't aware of.
 
Thanks for posting that, it was a pretty interesting read.

53% of Montana pilots still use the old airway system, so they must figure it is worth it to keep it running.

I think I'd like to take some dual out there on one of the airways. It would be really interesting, I think.

--Matt
 
[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, MS Sans Serif]"The last airway light beacon from the system begun in the 1920s was shut down in 1973. By the middle of 1982, the first of 950 new radio navigation aids equipped with solid-state construction and advanced features was installed. Navigation aids, the computers supporting the system, and cockpit displays and instruments to send and receive navigation data all improved steadily throughout the 1980s."

-- http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/navigation/POL13.htm

Is this not correct?

Edit: Dopey me; the original post referred to the article, which (in turn) refers to Montana (the state) maintaining its beacons.

Glad they do!
[/FONT]
 
SCCutler said:
[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, MS Sans Serif]
Edit: Dopey me; the original post referred to the article, which (in turn) refers to Montana (the state) maintaining its beacons.

Glad they do!
[/FONT]
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I'm never sure whether to post the text or the link. Probably should do both. I find some folks post without reading the link. I posted on the AOPA and a guy replied that Montana was still maintaining and airway.:rolleyes:
 
This from Instrument Flying by P.V.H. Weems and Charles Zweng, published in 1940 (who says I don't keep my reference library up-to-date??):
BEACON LIGHTS

The original standard airway beacon is a 24-inch rotating unit of the searchlight type with approximately 1,000,000 candlepower. The new standard airway beacon is a 36-inch rotating unit showing two beams of light separated by an angle of 180 , each beam having a maximum of about 1,250,000 candlepower. The airway beacons are so operated as to show six clear flashes per minute. A directional arrow seventy feet in length, which points to the next higher numbered beacon light, is constructed on the ground at the base of the beacon tower. On the feather end of the arrow, or on one side of the roof of the small power house, the beacon-light site number is painted. Beacons are numbered from west to east or south to north, between terminal cities, the numbers corresponding in each case to the nearest ten-mile interval.

In the case of beacon installations where rotating beacons showing only clear flashes (rotating beacons without color screen) are in use, course lights are generally installed to provide the auxiliary color flashes, the presence of landing facilities being indicated by green flashes and the absence of such facilities by red flashes. Two course lights are mounted on each beacon tower, one pointing forward and the other pointing backward along the airway. These course lights are searchlight projectors fitted with aviation red or green lenses and giving a beam of fifteen degrees horizontal and six degrees vertical spread and of about 100,000 candlepower. Each course light flashes its code signal, which corresponds to the number of the beacon on the airway. The course lights flash code numbers running from one to ten, and thus indicate successive 100-mile sections of the airway. In order for a pilot to identify positively the number of a beacon site or the miles he has flown along the airway from the code characteristic, it is necessary for him to know on which 100-mile section he is flying.

​
-- Pilawt
 
There was one just outside of New Hudson, MI, where I grew up. It was at the top of a morain called Hilltop, behind a restaurant of the same name. Liked to go there at night. Sometimes a Blue Goose DC-3 (North Central Air) would fly over between Detroit and Lansing. It was taken down about 1953.
 
bsdunek said:
There was one just outside of New Hudson, MI, where I grew up. It was at the top of a morain called Hilltop, behind a restaurant of the same name. Liked to go there at night. Sometimes a Blue Goose DC-3 (North Central Air) would fly over between Detroit and Lansing. It was taken down about 1953.
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Detroit Sectional, May 31, 1945
 

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roncachamp said:
Detroit Sectional, May 31, 1945
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Intersting.

Looking at it, of the 16 airports I found (assuming I am reading the symbols correctly) 10 no longer exist. I noticed about 4 to 6 existing airports that hadn't been built. And there is at least one that has come and gone in that time frame.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Interesting.

Looking at it, of the 16 airports I found (assuming I am reading the symbols correctly) 10 no longer exist. I noticed about 4 to 6 existing airports that hadn't been built. And there is at least one that has come and gone in that time frame.
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And, south of Detroit, Romulus AAF and Romulus Radio. This is where they kept the Romulans under wraps. :yikes:
 
The rogue said:
Thanks for posting that, it was a pretty interesting read.

53% of Montana pilots still use the old airway system, so they must figure it is worth it to keep it running.

I think I'd like to take some dual out there on one of the airways. It would be really interesting, I think.

--Matt
Click to expand...

Quoted from the article: "Fifteen percent said they frequently flew through the mountains at night, and 53 percent of them said they used the airway beacons while doing so."

So, that would make it more like 8%...
 
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