I am reaching back into my memories, but I would like to show how technology changed even the basic ways we, as navigators/weapon system operators, did our job.
I began Undergraduate Navigator Training in 1974 and was in one of the first classes to fly the T-43A. We were a transitional class, where our first nine(ish) flights were map reading/NAVAID flights in a T-29 to show some basic airmanship and teach you to keep track of where you have been so you can figure out how to get to where you want to be.
When I returned as an instructor in 1980 the mighty Convair “flying classroom” had replaced by the Cessna “Tweet” and a couple of videotape machines (called the navigation procedures lab or NPL). As a nipple instructor, my principal job was to teach people to add sideways and think ahead of the airplane while working with such abstract and complex ideas like drift, magnetic variation, and measurement scales based on 6 rather than 10.
In the T-29, almost all of my flights were on the “overland-south” route where we would take off, climb to something like 10,000 feet and take our departure fix over a runway that had its name written on it. Regrettably, I don’t remember the name, but since it was written in English the instructors assumed we could identify it. Then head south to LA, hang a left out to some point in the desert and turn around and come home. I don’t think we ever left California.
When we transitioned to the T-43 we climbed to FL 330 and were level before Reno. Our departure fix was always a radar range and bearing off Pyramid Lake’s island. From there we would head out on “overland-northeast” until we got to South Dakota where we would make the turn for home.
I somethings wonder how many students got their wings between that first radar fix from Pyramid Lake island, and the last when training moved to TX and FL?
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