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air headaches
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:24:30 -0400
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 ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- air headaches David Farber (Aug 31)