How did commercial pilots navigate before GPS?
How did commercial pilots navigate before GPS? Early pilots depended on contact flying — the use of lighthouses, roads, and other landmarks as navigational aids (navaids). A cockpit full of instruments would be years in coming.
How did pilots navigate in the 1930s?
Early Navigation Equipment Used on Nonstop Transatlantic Flights. Today, communicating and navigating for planes is all done by computers, satellites, and GPS. But during the flying boat era in the 1930s and 1940s, it was a very different story. They literally navigated by the sun, moon, and stars.
How did pilots in the 1920s navigate?
Flying at Night Initially, bonfires set along air routes were used to help guide pilots through the darkness. In the 1920s, the Post Office established a system of lighted airways marked by powerful rotating beacons.
How do pilots know how fast they are traveling?
The anemometer, the instrument for measuring speed in aeroplanes. Pilots have to promptly know the speed at which they are moving in the mass of air that surrounds the aeroplane and the anemometer is responsible for measuring it. The anemometer, as it is known today, was designed in 1926 by John Patterson.