He didn’t have to worry about other traffic that is sure :) But essentially that is what in those days those guys did as well, point it in the right direction and wait for the beacons to show up on their ADF’s and then correct the track with that. Before that, they hit the coast first and figured out where they were and then turned towards their destination.
Still, Boston to LHR with Fuel available to continue to Rome in a C Mooney must be something of a record. I’d probably need help to get out of the airplane after 16 hours….
But he only had to hit Ireland, which from the USA is about a 10 degree angle 
There were also different weather ships anchored in the ATL which had NDB’s as well. Also there was a very powerful beacon at the south tip of Greenland, Prins Christian Sund if memory does not fail me (possibly still there) which was used to get crosstrack bearings too. Other than that, it was dead reckogning and waiting for the next beacon to indicate. Some of those strong NDB’s would indicate a long way off. the coastal VOR’s depending on altitude would come in between 100 and 150 NM before.
I remember flying to the Canaries in the pre-GPS times. You’d loose the beacons in Spain halfways, flew heading and took cross track bearings from Morocco for about 40 minutes before the huge beacons from the islands would tune in. Most of the time you were right on track. When we got our first GPS (Pronav 100,later Garmin 100 AVD) we were amazed how few deviations you actually got.
Lindberg flew heading and watch. And still made it over.
There were NDBs and with any half decent ADF and over open ocean the system is as accurate as a VOR – within a degree or so. I recall testing this over flat open France and NDB bearings were within 1 degree of a VOR or GPS.
But also the island group where Santa Maria is is not a tiny spec in the ocean
so in reasonable weather with say 50nm vis…
It’s not like flying 500nm and landing on an aircraft carrier sailing in radio silence (I have no idea how they did that – probably it’s a myth).
Salim wrote:
Any idea of how one would manage the navigation back then for such a crossing ? Clock and Compass + NDB when getting closer to Santa Maria ?
This is a good question. I would be interested as well to know how they accurately navigate on these flights in the 60’s…
boscomantico wrote:
If you want to see some (very) recent footage of this aircraft, taken by its new German owner, see here
This is an amazing video on a lovely plane with a history, conventional instrumentation as I like it. Thank you for posting. This pilot knows what he is doing. He uses a paper checklist and makes call outs even in a less complex aircraft than TB850.
Salim wrote:
@ Mooney_Driver, the registration is still the original, French, one :
That is the plane I thought of. Marco and I are in contact since a while. Very nice guy and lovely plane. It is at Jesse’s shop at the moment for an avoinic upgrade if I am not mistaken.
Although not all about Mooneys, this is quite a page:
Funnily enough last night I picked-up a second-hand signed copy of a story of two people taking a Mooney around the world in late 2008. I have since seen that one of them had already been RTW in a Money in 2003 and possibly again since 2008. There are three books. I have the middle one:
What great background for the new owner of the Mooney. For me, that sort of thing makes owning the plane much more interesting. It looks to be in nice shape today too, wonderful.
Re the video, I noticed the two Velocity canards tied down in the snow at Luxembourg. Wonder what brought them together there? Otherwise, I wonder how the radio chatter per hour would compare to all those VFR flights around the Mediterranean in the 60s! So much for the benefits of technology.
