air headaches

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "James J. O'Donnell" <jod () georgetown edu>
Date: August 31, 2007 9:20:27 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: air headaches

Dave, a good article on the challenges of getting here to there:

http://www.businessweek.com//magazine/content/07_37/b4049001.htm

I was struck this time by the mention of using satellite-based
navigation.  Hit me that when I was just in Zambia flying with bush
pilots from dirt strip to dirt strip, that *they* have solved the
problem of navigation once and for all -- they let their GPS fly them.
 I sat next to a couple of the pilots and as soon as they took off,
they hit three buttons for a pre-programmed destination and we flew on
a direct level flight to that location with no further thinking about
routing -- no more looking around for airstrips, and not even any more
flying by traditional radio beacon.  Similar pilots I had met in
Australia a couple of years ago had two GPS -- on in the plane and a
personally-owned one on their belt.  If they go down someplace
sketchy, they don't want to ask people to do zig-zag flying patterns
looking for them, they want to call in their exact location and get
the heck out of there in a couple of hours.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown


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