Six years ago, Mr. D. H. Sadler, in a memorable Presidential Address, answered the question ‘What is the Institute?’ This leads to the complementary and perhaps even more controversial question ‘What is navigation? What is its scope and its general pattern?’

If we look at the word Navigation in a dictionary, we may very well find that it is associated only with the sea. Today, of course, a much wider view is taken and the word is accepted as having to do with the land and the air and even with space. The definition: ‘the art of conducting a vessel on its ways’, may therefore be amended in words such as:

Navigation is the business of conducting a craft as it moves about its ways.

The year 1932 was one which had no great apparent significance for navigators, and yet it saw the commencement of two new lines of research which today, after an interval of more than a quarter-of-a-century, promise important contributions to the safety of navigators both at sea and in the air.

The two lines of research were superficially quite unrelated, but fundamentally they relied upon the same principle—the detection of radiant energy emitted by objects solely as a result of their temperature. The first of these small beginnings was the discovery by K. G. Jansky that radio waves could be detected from extra-terrestrial sources: the second was the commencement by the U.S. Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories of an intensive study of infra-red devices with the object of obtaining night vision without illumination of the field of view.

From Jansky's discovery has sprung the whole science of radio astronomy, which has revolutionized our ideas about the universe, and brought in its wake, as one practical benefit, the radio sextant. From the work of the U.S. Signal Corps there resulted a number of very useful infra-red components, including the pneumatic detector, better known as the Golay cell.

In this paper presented on 17 June 1960, with Captain F. J. Wylie, R.N. in the Chair, the Harbour Master of Southampton considers the problem of coordinating shipping movements in a major port. The experience of Southampton is largely drawn upon and a description is given of the communications systems and the use of the harbour radar in that port.

In order to find out what type of doppler navigation equipment would be most suitable for the S.A.S. fleet of DC-8s it was decided to start a programme of doppler evaluation in Spring 1958. The doppler evaluation programme included evaluation of doppler equipment from Canadian Marconi, General Precision Laboratory (G.P.L.) and Collins Radio Company.

The programme started in April 1958 with evaluation of Canadian Marconi doppler equipment. The evaluation period lasted six months. In April 1959 evaluation of Collins and G.P.L. doppler equipment started and lasted for eight months. In March 1960 evaluation of Collins and Canadian Marconi doppler equipment started and is still in progress. And finally by the middle of May 1960 evaluation of G.P.L. Radan 500 was in progress.

When, in 1958, B.O.A.C. undertook to evaluate the Marconi AD 2300 doppler navigator, the exercise was planned with great care. The aim was to determine the performance of the system in quantitative terms, and to express the results so that their operational significance was clear.

In preparing this evaluation, three objectives were stated, as follows:

(a) To obtain quantitative data on the performance of the AD 2300, considered as a measuring device, in terms of accuracy, consistency and reliability.

(b) To obtain qualitative information on the optimum methods of system application, by reference to observer reaction.

(c) To introduce the doppler system in operation to a wider selection of B.O.A.C. flying staff, in order to develop a body of informed opinion.

It is the first of these objectives with which this paper will deal.

When motor-cars were first invented, they were sometimes called horseless carriages, so naturally some early automobiles were designed to look (as far as possible) like a horse and carriage without the horse. We may be in danger of making similar errors. Some Doppler Navigators appear designed to perpetuate methods of navigation which doppler itself should help to render obsolete.

Basically, the doppler phenomenon, measured in the aircraft, gives the aircraft's velocity relative to the reflecting terrain as a vector referenced to the aircraft's axes. In other words, angle of attack, drift and ground-speed are measured directly.

The possible application of this information to improved methods of aircraft operation is almost infinite in its variety. The ways of applying, for example, accurately measured angle of attack, to the take-off, approach and landing phases, or to performance analysis, are numerous. Perhaps the most wildly esoteric suggestion for the application of angle of attack information was that aircraft could be weighed in flight by doppler given equivalent air-speed and the lift/drag polar of the aircraft; unfortunately the question of how to obtain a usable accuracy was not precisely explained! Of course, if sufficient accuracy were possible in this application, we could have a rather novel fuel flow-meter since, on all well conducted flights, fuel flow = rate of change of aircraft weight.

In order to provide facilities ashore for obtaining experience in the use of radar in conditions approximating to those at sea, a marine radar simulator has been developed by the Ministry of Transport as an aid to training. In this way, ships’ officers can obtain experience, particularly in the avoidance of collision, which could rarely be obtained at sea without endangering the ship. The instrument shows synthetic target echoes on a standard marine radar display and the effects of their movements and manœuvres. Helm and engine controls are provided to allow the observer to manœuvre as he thinks fit to avoid collision.

In this paper the Professional Officer and Chief Nautical Surveyor of the Ministry of Transport describes the simulator, the courses for ships’ officers that the Ministry has instituted, and the results of these courses. The paper, with three appendices which are not reproduced here, was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Ausschuss fur Funkortung held at Kiel from 12–17 September 1960, and is published with the kind permission of that body.

To the layman navigation may sometimes appear as an old lady whose fads have acquired the sanctity of tradition. In every tradition, however, there is something venerable; and we would be very wrong to laugh at the traditions of the sea, for they are a legacy we have inherited from all our seafaring ancestors since the days of Noah.

The core of this inheritance is the notion of freedom. For centuries the freedom of the seas was absolute and unconditional; all men were free to use the sea, for no man can plant his flag on its restless immensities; and all were free to choose their routes and navigate as they pleased, for encounters at sea were so infrequent that it would be only a most uncommon stroke of ill-luck that produced a collision between two vessels in the vast emptiness of the oceans.

If we examine the traffic in the Strait of Dover, which in its most narrow part is 17 miles wide, we notice that nearly the whole of this traffic, about 98 per cent, is concentrated and strangled under the British coast, in a narrow pass about five miles wide. Very heavy traffic coming from all parts of the world gathers together in the bottleneck which is the Channel. Thus innumerable vessels, when still in the Strait of Dover, spread out fan-wise at the very place where traffic in an opposite direction concentrates in order to make the same narrow passage. It is the unorganized convergence of these many routes which concentrates this very dense traffic at the mouth of the Strait of Dover and is the cause of all too many collisions. One immediately concludes that by relieving congestion and by organizing or canalizing the traffic, the problem will have received an acceptable answer.

While engaged in the observation and prediction of the position of Sputnik I, it was realized that, if a reliable orbit were available, and an observation of the satellite against the background of stars were made to a precision of about 0°·1 and timed to about 0·2 of a second, then the position of the observer could be determined to a precision sufficient for most navigational purposes. The following account demonstrates how this has actually been done from a single visual observation of the American Balloon Satellite Echo I (designated 1960ι1).

Principle of method. The direction in which an observer on the Earth's surface sees an artificial satellite at any instant differs from that in which it is seen by any other observer and from that in which it would be observed from the centre of the Earth. The amount and direction of the parallactic shift can be determined from the comparison of the direction of observation with that calculated from the geocentric ephemeris of the satellite; and the position of the observer on the Earth's surface can be uniquely calculated from this parallactic shift. Only a single observation is required, without reference to the vertical.

The Channel Bridge. I am happy to report that Commandant Poll's admirable scheme for traffic in the Strait of Dover (p. 75) has provoked, at least on paper, a most interesting reaction. Commandant Poll brought out his plan in February 1960. In March the Compagnie Française d'Entreprises consulted me about a scheme for a Channel Bridge which they had drawn up in conjunction with the English firm of Dorman Long and the American Merrit-Chapman and Scott Company.

As seamen we hold no brief either for a bridge or for a tunnel; our personal interest can be no more than an expression of our attitude as citizens of our respective countries. But as soon as the matter was brought to my attention I realized that there can be no two opinions about our professional attitude: we must first make sure that the bridge will neither endanger nor delay shipping, and when we are satisfied on that point, we must do nothing to hinder the realization of a project which cannot fail to improve international relations in our ageing West.

How are we to make sure of our necessary condition? The first and most important step is to establish the one-way routes detailed by Commandant Poll, and to see to it that the arches which cross them are as wide as possible. The normal span, 200 metres from pier to pier, with a clearance of 53 metres, is suitable only for small ships.

The Working Party on Fuel Reserves for aircraft recommends that a major statistical attack should be made by a qualified body with the aid of an electronic computer on the problem of how to rationalize fuel reserves. I C.A.O's Standing Committee on Performance did much to standardize the risk of an aircraft hitting the ground on take-off and on landing, hence increasing profitability without prejudicing safety. Might not I.C.A.O. set up a committee to tackle fuel reserves on similar lines?

I think that even now, in advance of such a major undertaking, fuel reserves might be rationalized a little if certain information were available to flight planners and crews. For instance, Durst has given the accuracy of forecast mean equivalent head winds for a few routes (this Journal, 13, 288); if it were given for a wider selection of routes, perhaps the fuel reserve carried for ‘navigational error’ could be roughly specified as the extra fuel needed to cope with 95 per cent (say) of the errors expected in forecast M.E.H.W. The use of extra fuel enroute for other causes is much less frequent (on piston-engined aircraft anyway) and could generally be covered by change of destination or by use of fuel nominally carried for diversion.