NAVIGATIONAL AIDS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25272, 26 August 1947, Page 8

NAVIGATIONAL AIDS

UNUSUAL MUSEUM AT WIGRAM

EQUIPMENT ON EXHIBITION

A museum of navigational aids and equipment, the only one of its kind in New Zealand, has been established by the air navigation school at the Royal New Zealand Air Force Station, Wigram. The exhibits range from instruments used by the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, to the latest British and American designs, and many aids to navigation used by the Japanese in the recent war. The school hopes to obtain samples of German and Italian equipment from the R.A.F.

Apart from the general interest of the exhibits, they serve a useful purpose in the instruction of navigators under training at the school. Some have been arranged as working models which serve as synthetic trainers, such as a combination of the air position indicator, distance-reading compass, and direction finding loop aerial. The ■ distance reading compass, which combines the best features of the gyro and magnetic compasses, has been mounted in a perspex case, and several different types of modern compasses used in aircraft are included in a large panel of instruments. The museum contains a collection of sextants—British, American and Japanese—varying from the marine version of 1908, to the latest automatic instrument used by the service. All are in working order so that pupils can compare their merits. One article of Japanese manufacture is an exact copy of an American design; but the workmanship is inferior to the general standard navigation equipment made in Japan. In the collection of drift recorders, there is a brass sight used by observers of the First World War. Near it is the latest telescopic gyro-con-trolled model from the United States and a Japanese unit of original design. Students can practise taking sights with a training device which simulates flights over land and - sea by day or night. The only German-made exhibit at present in the museum is an artificial horizon (a blind-flying indicator which shows the attitude of an aircraft), with an interesting record. It was taken from a German aircraft during the war by a member of the French resistance movement, who gave it to a New Zealand pilot. It is the only example of an electrically driven artificial horizon in the collection, the other types being worked by suction. A large number of computers used by navigators and pilots to determine speeds and courses in the air. are on view, ranging from early models to those which are standard to-day. A Japanese copy of the British Dalton computer is a well finished product which compares more than favourably with the original. However, several Japanese articles which appear to be computers or calculators are a mystery; instructors at the school have not yet been able to find out their uses.