[ARC5] ZB discussion!

[J. Forster]

> ZB is a totally different system.  The problem with using ZB as a
> navigation
> system is its inherent positional inaccuracy due the lack of distance
> data.
> Even then, the plane is going to fly until the pilot finds where two
> sectors
> meet.

I'm not so sure about that. Would a pilot, lost and low on fuel, really
fly looking for a border if he could figure out roughly which direction to
fly in from the code letters?

I would have thought he'd fly in the indicated direction in a constant
heading toward the emitter and make a course correction to port or
starboard when he hit a boundary. That's the shortest way home.

-John

============

> When you begin to leave one sector and enter another you begin to
> hear the new sector's letter ID and can correct your flight path to remain
> on the line where the sectors meet.  Kind of like the old AN ranges.
> Theoretically, you could find the transmitter if you did not have the
> sector
> ID's for the day but it would be much harder as there is no "sense"
> function
> that tells you the direction to or from the transmitter like there is in
> modern RDF systems.  The daily sector codes told the pilot roughly which
> direction to fly to go toward the transmitter until he found a sector
> boundary.  The great advantages of ZB during the war were the frequency,
> which was high for the technology that the Japanese had during the war,
> and
> the inability of an uninformed listener, if he even found the frequency,
> to
> detect the sector information or derive the daily sector codes.