Evening star., 1937-05-23
German Blind Landing
Methods Demonstrated
Aviation World Attracted to Indianapolis
Airport, Where instrument Approach"
Methods Are Examined.

Bureau OF Standards did some work
in locating the center of the airport
and giving sleeper glide path. They
also made an installation at the Oak
land, Calf, Airport, which United
Airlines later arranged to use for
experimental purposes.
1t was at this time that Air Com
merce began to make a study of other
systems that had been growing up
alongside the Standards plan. Prin-
cipal among these was the Hegenber-
ger or Army system, which made use,
for the first time, of the radio COM
pass. This system was largely the
development Of Maj. Albert F. Hegen-
berger, using Wright Field as base.
1t was mobilized, for the Ar1ny's spe-
clal needs. by use Of small automobile
truck transmitters. Announcement
was made by the bureau in November,
1884, that this system had been
adopted as standard and that installa-
tions would be rapidly made at lead
ing airports. Considerable work was
done, but the project had largely to
be abandoned late in 1885, the prin-
cipal reason being that the airlines
were not satisfied that the radio COM
pass was as yet sufficiently reliable.
Since then I. r. Metcalfe, aeronaut-
les development engineer for Air
Commerce, has been going ahead with
his own system. with the Massachu-
sets Institute of Technology helping
He has made definite improvements,
especially In instrument simplification
for the pilot through a combination
of the directional gyro and the arti-
f1cial horizon with the flight path
instrument Every pilot, from Doo-
little on, has complained Of too many
things to watch and do. and the
mental hazard for the average pilot
is severe. Mr.. Metcalfe told me
recently. Everybody hopes that some
way other than radio can be found.
Among other projects included in my
system is an infra-red projection that
is very hopeful. There is little conf
dence in this as yet but we have some
evidence to show that it will project
over certain distances, and we can
take any landing system now, how
ever clumsy, and, by using mira red,
even in its present stage, protect it
and make it safe. We are using ultra
short wave for localizing, not for the
glide path-those in our work have all
been ultra-high. Our runway localiz-
ing is done on frequencies handled by
regular range transmitter already in
the plane and We have to add much
less additional equipment"
Out in Oakland United Airlines
has gone ahead with its own ex-
periments, in which T. W. A. and
Bendix have recently joined. Only
one announcement Of progress has
been made, just year ago, and de-
velopments have been closely guarded.
The principal known point of depar-
ture made here has been in the
adoption of the automatic pilot. The
human pilot intercepts the landing
and runway beams at about 1000
feet elevation miles out from the
airport. When his visual indicators
show that he is exactly "on course"
he throttles down to 80 miles an
hour and turn on the robot pilot.
From then on until the planes wheels
touch the ground his hands and feet
are of the controls. His only task
is to make an occasional adjustment
on the automatic pilot control should
there be any slight deviation from
the exact landing path. The plane
follows the curved beam, which grad
ually f1attens out as the runway nears,
and two-point landing is made with
the tail up. There the human pilot |
again takes over, and 1t is possible |
for him to put the brakes full on
with no fear Of nosing over Pre-
cision landings are said to be far
surer with this method
The Lorenz system. just demon
strated here at Indianapolis, was an
early development from the Stand
ards system. The German govern
ment became much interested in 1t
and through its own research estab-
lishment, in connection with the
commercial establishment of which
Lorenz was the active mover, pro-
dueed some interesting advances. The