RADIO BEARINGS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20826, 3 July 1942, Page 5

RADIO BEARINGS

COMMERCIAL PILOTS USE FOR NAVIGATION EVIDENCE ~AT INQUIRY (P.A.) NELSON, this day. The evidence of the chief radio operator at the Nelson air radio station was heard this morning by the board of inquiry into the recent Lockheed air-liner crash on Mount Richmond. Dr. N. A. Foden, for the Controller of Civil Aviation, submitted to the board the evidence given by Commander Gerrand, a former Union Airways pilot, before going overseas. Commander Gerrand had stated that he had seen the “notice to airmen” issued by the Air Department, which stated: “It has come to the notice of the Air Department that pilots on commercial plane services are using directionfinding stations which have not been cleared for general use for the purpose of navigating in cloud and through overcast conditions, and this practice must cease immediately. Unless (a) the station has been notified as available for general use, and (b) the procedure for the employment of directionfinding is covered in an approved operations manual for the route, bearings from direction-finding stations are not to be relied upon in navigation or used for instrument approach and breaking the ceiling.” Commander Gerrand also said he had himself used the bearings from direction-finding stations for the purpose of assisting his navigation in and above the cloud, and thought a pilot was justified in using any means at his disposal to assist him in increasing the accuracy of his dead reckoning position. Robert William Saunderson, chief operator, said that from the entries in the log he had: the impression that the; plane,had passed Nelsph. The primary ■ duty of the operator ■ was to give a plane as many accurate bearings a,s possible. If it was necessary to sacrifice anything, it had to be the recordings in the log. Positional reports were not sent by the plane on this occasion, though it was usually done in flying through cloud. Those reports could be estimates only. The court of inquiry then adjourned to resume at Wellington next Monday.