[time-nuts] Loran C sounds

Robert Atkinson robert8rpi at yahoo.co.uk
Sun Feb 14 15:41:22 UTC 2010


Hi,A company I worked for in the mid 90's updated their  Tracor VLF Omega navigation systems (about 20) to include an embedded GPS. This was not cheap. About a year later they shut down Omega. As the GPS was a "secondary" sensor they had to replace the whole system, DOH!
Robert G8RPI.

--- On Sun, 14/2/10, Bob Camp <lists at cq.nu> wrote:

From: Bob Camp <lists at cq.nu>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Loran C sounds
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" <time-nuts at febo.com>
Date: Sunday, 14 February, 2010, 13:24

Hi

Omega was pretty much the "way to go" for large ship (think super tankers) navigation until the late 1980's.  At least in the US, the big commercial airlines switched from Omega to GPS in the 1990's. Anybody that was using it had to do something before it was shut down in 1997. Loran-C is not the first big time system they have shut down in the face of competition from GPS. 

Bob


On Feb 14, 2010, at 2:04 AM, Neville Michie wrote:

> Australia never had LORAN. At one stage I think a Decca system was trialed, but never installed.
> We had a system of secondary radar called DME from the late 50s - early 60s. A randomised pulse pair was sent out from the plane and was received
> by a beacon at the airport. The beacon digested it for 14 odd microseconds and sent out a reply pulse. The two way delay was displayed
> in nautical miles on a cockpit indicator. The range was 200+ miles at VHF and the pulse pairing could interrogate other beacons by changing pulse spacing.
> With three beacons and a compass how could you get lost?
> I do not know how shipping located themselves.
> cheers, Neville Michie
> 
> On 14/02/2010, at 5:36 PM, Robert Berg wrote:
> 
>> I believe he's referring to the Fairchild A-10A bubble sextant, originally produced in the 1940s.  I used a periscopic sextant in the KC-135, an improvement over the hand-held, or dome-mounted bubble sextant, but I never used any sextant in the Fairchild Republic A-10A "Warthog" I subsequently flew.  Interesting coincidence with nomenclature.  Using a sextant in my single-seat Warthog would have been a trick!  I confess to having drooled over Loran C while serving as a nav in SAC.  When I eventually installed Loran C in my personal Mooney aircraft, I was quite pleased with its performance, but there's no question that GPS has eclipsed Loran in many ways for global navigation.  Strangely enough, the only Loran receiver I saw operationally in the USAF was Loran A, in the KC-135Q, to improve navigation for rendezvous with the SR-71. It was quite a dinosaur, even in the '70s.
>> 
>> Matt Osborn wrote:
>>> A hog driver and time-nut; heck of a combination.  I kept my feet on
>>> the ground back in the '60s. but always had my spirits lifted when
>>> Spooky showed up.
>>> 
>>> Heard you guys flew the wings off those planes. Boeing is replacing
>>> all 242 wing sets for another 20  years of service.
>>> 
>>> Thanks for your service, Peter.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:29:39 -0800, Peter Putnam
>>> <pico.2008 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> My A-10 aircraft
>>> 
>>> -- kc0ukk at msosborn dot com
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
>> and follow the instructions there.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
> 


_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
and follow the instructions there.



      


More information about the time-nuts mailing list