Origins of Scientific Aircraft Navigation

• Autor(a) principal: Barata, Jorge M M
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Mendes, António, Morgado, Cândido M. P., Neves, Fernando M. S. P., Silva, André
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/12194
• topic: Aircraft Navigation; Aeroplane; History of Aviation; Gago Coutinho; Aviation; Planets; Celestial Navigation; Flight Altitude; Pilot Licence; Astrolabes

Two Portuguese navigators crossed the South Atlantic in the beginning of the 20th century. They developed and used for the first time scientific methods of astronomic navigation when flying out of sight of land. A new model of sextant that could be used to measure the altitude of a star without the need of the sea horizon was developed. Another instrument called "path corrector" was introduced to calculate graphically the drift of an airplane and the direction of flight, taking into account the intensity and the direction of the winds. For the very first time in the history of the aviation the crossing of the South Atlantic had been achieved, and using an instrument that enabled an airplane's position to be precisely determined by astronomic navigation when flying out of sight of land.