FW: a bit of aviation history

[William Fenn]

http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/arrows.asp

 

 

  _____  

From: Norm 
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2013 6:32 AM
To: Norm 
Subject: Fw: a bit of aviation history

 

Forwarded to me -- I knew about various navaids from back in The Day, but
had never heard of these arrows.



 

----- Forwarded Message -----

This comes under: Learning Something New........

YOU MIGHT FIND THIS INTERESTING.  


  

Giant Concrete Arrows...

This Really Exists:

Giant Concrete Arrows That Point Your Way Across America ...


  

[]


  

Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the American Southwest,

a hiker or a backpacker will run across something puzzling:

a large concrete arrow, as much as seventy feet in length,

sitting in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere.


  

[]


  

What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark?

Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth¡¯s turn signals?


  

[]


  

No, it's...

The Transcontinental Air Mail Route .


  

[]


  

On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first coast-to-coast

airmail delivery route, just 60 years after the Pony Express closed up shop.


  

There were no good aviation charts in those days,

so pilots had to eyeball their way across the country using landmarks.

This meant that flying in bad weather was difficult,

and night flying was just about impossible.


  

The Postal Service solved the problem with the world's first ground-based

civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that would extend from

New York to San Francisco . Every ten miles, pilots would pass a bright
yellow

concrete arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot steel tower

and lit by a million-candlepower rotating beacon.

(A generator shed at the tail of each arrow powered the beacon.)


  

[]


  

Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a matter of
weeks,

but in just 30 hours or so.


  

Even the dumbest of air mail pilots, it seems, could follow a series of
bright

yellow arrows straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon. By 1924, just a year
after

Congress funded it, the line of giant concrete markers stretched from Rock
Springs,

Wyoming to Cleveland , Ohio . The next summer, it reached all the way to New
York ,

and by 1929 it spanned the continent uninterrupted, the envy of postal
systems worldwide.


  

image015.png at 01CE936E.D715F870


  

Radio and radar are, of course, infinitely less cool than a concrete

Yellow Brick Road from sea to shining sea, but I think we all know how

this story ends. New advances in communication and navigation technology
made

the big arrows obsolete, and the Commerce Department decommissioned the
beacons

in the 1940s. The steel towers were torn down and went to the war effort.

But the hundreds of arrows remain. Their yellow paint is gone,

their concrete cracks a little more with every winter frost,

and no one crosses their path much, except for coyotes and tumbleweeds.


  

But they're still out there.


 



 

 

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image006.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 93799 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0006.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image005.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 64592 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0007.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 45188 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0008.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 71245 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0009.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 91978 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0010.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 76385 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://amrad.org/pipermail/tacos/attachments/20131009/d1585b86/attachment-0011.jpg>