Airline Radio Position Map
At Portland (Ore.) Airport, United Air Lines is using a map with several interesting
features to indicate location of pilots and planes at airports, or along the airways as
reported at intervals by radio. The system is based on individual tags for each
plane and for each pilot. Each tag is hung indivually on hooks in ruled spaces at
the bottom of the map, each space indicating a base, when the plane or pilot is not
flying.
When one of the 25 planes takes off, the plane tag is removed from the space bearing the name of the airport from which the plane departs, and the tag for the pilot is removed from the pilot rack and affixed to the plane tag. As the position reports come in, at ten-minute intervals, the tag is moved along the airways to its destination. The arrows have magnetic bases and the map a metal base so that the arrows may be moved along the route easily and accurately.
This map gives an overall picture of the plane operations at all times. The information is useful to the traffic department as well as the operations men, and enables dissemination of information without interfering with the work of the radio operator.
Colonial Air Transport and Colonial Western Divisions of American
Airways at Newark Airport (New Jersey) keep track of plane positions over the New
York-Boston and the New York-Albany-Cleveland routes by means of maps ruled off in sqaures
and a pair of buttons for each plane, the plane's number appearing on the face of the
buttons. A pilot enroute reports periodically and announces his position by stating
the square he is in. The radio operator [at base] places one button on the point
where the plane is reporting and another at the point where it last reported, the
difference indicating the progress being made.
(This news item originally appeared in Aviation, January, 1932)
