The ability to navigate using radio signals revolutionized aviation. It allowed pilots to automatically and continuously find their location in conditions of little or no visibility, such as a cloudy night or a foggy day. Airplanes were now an effective form of transportation in a much larger set of conditions, not to mention the military advantage of being able to fly in low-visibility situations.

Join us on this episode of The Wing Wag as we go discuss how radio navigation works for a variety of different systems: RDF, Reverse RDF, ADF, VOR, DME, ILS, transponders, and LORAN.

Celestial navigation is one of the oldest forms of navigation dating back thousands of years. It can be as simple as following the North Star or as complex as measuring the angular distances between stars and the moon to calculate what time it is. Whatever form of celestial navigation you are doing, the idea is the same; use the known positions of the heavenly bodies at a particular time to calculate your location by observing the positions of same heavenly bodies in your local sky.

Join Hunter and I this week as we navigate the past, present, and future of this surprisingly effective method of navigation.

Dead reckoning is one of the most basic forms of navigation; you simply move in a known direction and record how far you travel going in that direction. Using your old location, you can now compute your new location. You might be surprised to find out that some of the newest most technologically advanced aircraft still use this form of navigation. Join us to find out why this ancient form of navigation is still used today in the presence of much more advanced forms of navigation such as GPS.