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Book recommendation

Could anyone here recommend me a book or books about history of instrument flight with its procedures,charts, approaches, etc.? I find this subject increasingly interesting and I haven’t seen anything relevant in my to-go pilot webshops or in the rare aviation libraries I have found…

Thanks!

LEBL, Spain

They used to call them Beam Approaches. An internet search on that term will give some clues including if you search for images, plates.

Arthur C Clarke’s Glide Path is a novelised version of the wartime development of the Ground Controlled Approach (SRA / PAR).

One of my collection of pilots’ war memoirs includes some stuff about early beam approaches but I cannot remember which one so that is no help. I’ll keep racking my brain.

strip near EGGW

And for a lot of us who started commercial flying as late as the 80s, a large proportion of approaches were SRA, NDB or even (God help us) VDF. Only big places had ILS.

EGKB Biggin Hill

It might go too far back, and be practical or science based rather than flying based, but I can recommend:

Radio Aids to Navigation by R A Smith (1947, Cambridge University Press)

for a good concise overview; and:

Radar Aids to Navigation by John S Hall (1947, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

for more in depth study, and radar includes a lot more than our modern definition.

If you want more info or to see if they’re relevant I can take photos of the contents pages. They cover Loran and Decca which might be familiar to some people on here

My grandfather was involved in the early development and testing of Radar and Oboe, amongst others, as his real interest was in radio, so most of his books are on radio and radar, but from the viewpoint of someone who used to build them at home.

EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

Thanks for the reccomendations! Sorry for the late reply, I have been offline a couple of days…

LEBL, Spain

There is an expo at Denver airport featuring Jeppesen. He began by taking handwritten notes and drawing procedures. He also implemented the first version of ATIS (phone numbers of farmers who would give weather reports).

always learning
LO__, Austria

ATIS is push, whereas that is Fetch.

More like a prototype Golze ;-)

EGKB Biggin Hill
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