THIS ARTICLE, ENTITLED "THE PASSING YEARS" WAS WRITTEN FOR MY COLUMN WHICH APPEARS MONTHLY IN THE EAA MAGAZINE, "WARBIRDS"....

I got thinking the other day just how much aviation has changed in my lifetime.  From the old round engine to the new sophisticated jets.  From the occasionally cold breezy  cockpit to the plush confines of a Gulfstream Five.  From a instrument panel that gave us basic engine information to the glass cockpit that places the pilot in an observer  category.  “Cat 3” landings, auto landing systems, and back up computer systems that never seem to end.  WOW!  If you have never done a long cross country trip, that took two or three days, totally with only a needle, ball, and airspeed, you will never experience arriving at your destination with a feeling that you have just really completed a  trip that you can be proud of.  VFR flying in the old days had a very special meaning.   Instrument flying was still in the dark ages.  There was a reason that most small towns painted their town name of the side of their water tower.  It told you where you were.  The road map in the side pocket confirmed it, and told you where you had to head next.

During World War Two, in the Pacific theatre,  it was basically a Bubble Sextant that got you back to the base.  Dead reckoning was one method  for a lot of navigation. Just fantasize flying all day (15 tp 18 hours), and only see land twice.  Once when you left, and once when you returned. Back when flying from your home airport, a great deal of time was spent on memorizing all of the landmarks you could remember, the lakes, rivers, certain farms, buildings, roads,  insuring  you were, where you thought you were.  I have made the statement hundreds of times.  “Flying itself is not hard.  Left alone most single engine aircraft will fly themselves quite well.  It’s getting from point A to point B, and then trying to get back to point A again where all the problems arose.”   With today’s electronics  it’s  almost  impossible to get lost.  Unless you are flying without them.  Was there ever a time, when you were flying alone, and a small piece of doubt crept into your mind, and wandered for a while, not quite sure of if you were on the correct path.  I know in the early days it happened to me on a few occasions.
While the new generation does enjoy the benefits of what the electronic world is providing in way of navigation aids, engine monitors, communication facilities, but there always will remain a vast gap in their education that only came about when the individual had to almost totally rely on his own ability only to get from point A to point B. 

Following railroad tracks always insured you were eventually going to see a town at some point along the line.  Following roads still works. The “bush Pilot” today is the last of a breed that navigates by sight, with certain landmarks locked in , and not much else.

I can still remember my first introduction to  Loran as a navigation system.   I bought a Loran at a boat yard,  as it was meant to be used on a boat.  The first  Lorans were for the boaters only.  Not aircraft.  They were huge!  I could l have stored bread in the one I bought.  There was absolutely no data base and it could hold only forty eight waypoints.  Each waypoint had to be slaved in by hand and could be retained, or changed at will.  I was overwhelmed by the sophistication of the unit.  What a wonderful, mysterious piece of electronics that could guide me anywhere I wanted to go   The unit was about the size of two  shoe boxes tied together, and I mounted it in a tray under the instrument panel on the right side of the cockpit.  It did not care what type of vehicle it was placed in.  It told you where you were. Where you were going.  How fast you were going, and if you were on course or straying a little.  What more could you ask for!  No more guessing on my distance to my destination.  The Loran told me in no uncertain terms how many miles I was out, and my ground speed would give me the time it would take to get to where I was headed.  WOW!

So off I went.   Milwaukee, Wisconsin  to Dallas, Texas.  The Loran gave me the exact number of miles to Dallas, and the direction I had to fly.  Yes, I did have my fuel stops programmed in also.  So I dialed into my first fuel stop and into the air I went.  The Loran kept me right on track, plus giving me my ground speed, and diminishing distance to my station.  I could not believe what a miracle I had found. Then you can imagine what all of the old timers felt when Loran really got sophisticated.  The current Loran C took very good care of you.  Held you by the hand all the way, and made sure you did not get lost! Then all of this was topped off by  theultimate navigation system.  It was called a GPS (Global Positioning System) and it brought aviation navigation to a new level.  Today, flying over the North Pole using GPS gives you a major advantage.  The system is not affected by the North Pole magnetic field, as your position comes from satellite fixes.  One would really have to work hard to go astray  with today’s navigation assists.

For those that can remember back that far, we always kept a weather eye out for the proverbial “corn field”  in case of a failure of some kind.  Some of today’s  aircraft, come complete even  with a parachute for the aircraft  (the Cirrus), plus enough redundancy  that almost insures that whatever happens, there is a solution in the system that will take care of it.  Our confidence in commercial aviation is such that the thought of wearing a parachute in a Boeing 747 is ridiculous, yet we would never climb into some of the  older  warbirds  without one.  One would be hard pressed today, to find someone who has not experienced a  commercial flight.  Our confidence in aircraft today,  has placed the airplane almost in the same category as the family car. If you need to get there fast, go by air. The term, “Cattle Car” has crept into our vocabulary, and I don’t believe I have to explain it to anyone. 

There are some benefits that aging has provided.  We will always remember our flying from the early days to the present.  The early days gave us relatively empty skies most of the time, while 9/11 has almost brought private flying back to that stage.  Flying was simple.  Life was simple.  The aircraft also were simple.  This was just prior to the time when someone realized that by moving the tail wheel up to the front of the aircraft, steering would become a lot easier, and we would not ground loop so much.   I would assume that somewhere in the distant future they  will be talking about spacecraft in the same vein.  Life just keeps moving us along.  So now when you put away your cell phone, just before you climb into your new single engine plane with the glass cockpit, remember that some of us paved the way with two empty soup can connected by a piece of string, and not much more in our aircraft panel than an altimeter, VSI, airpeed indicator, turn & bank, plus the RPM gauge.  But we somehow arrived at our destination.  Another adventure for the log book.