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A discipline that combines the means to know the location and heading of an aircraft with respect to some map or coordinate system, with guidance which means steering the aircraft along some desired path toward a destination. The construction of the…

A form of navigation that determines position of a craft by advancing a previous position to a new one on the basis of assumed distance and direction moved. The name probably stems from the early practice of determining speed by throwing overboard a…

Equipment used for determining the direction from which a received signal is being radiated. Direction finders serve a variety of applications. Direction finders can be used for navigation purposes to determine the heading of a vehicle relative to a…

An internationally standardized navigation system which allows an aircraft to measure its distance from a selected ground-based beacon. Such beacons are used throughout the world by all airliners, most of the military aircraft of the West, and a…

Systems that locate suitably equipped users by means of measurements made by electronic sensors. Typical measurements include distance or bearing from a vehicle to a known point, or direct determination of the present position of the vehicle in a…

A system carried on many aircraft to warn the pilot that the aircraft may be in danger of inadvertent contact with the ground. It is intended to reduce the occurrence of controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) accidents, in which aircraft with no…

A process of navigation by which a destination is approached by keeping some navigation parameter constant. In its early uses, the most commonly chosen parameter was the relative bearing from the vehicle to destination as determined from a signal…

A navigation system from which hyperbolic lines of position are determined by measuring the difference in times of arrival of pulses from widely spaced, synchronized transmitting stations. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, a line of…

A compass depending for its directive force upon the attraction of the Earth's magnetism on a magnet free to turn in any horizontal direction. A compass is an instrument used for determining horizontal direction. Principle of operation The magnetic…