HISTORY OF PRESSURE PATTERN NAVIGATION

John C. Bellamy

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Inflight pressure pattern navigation was initiated in 1943 when readings of an aircraft’s pressure and radar altimeters were first used to determine its so-called “Bellamy Drift” and/or pressure lines of position. This led to preflight planning of single-heading flights and optimum flight planning based on the patterns of the contours of constant-pressure upper-air charts. The manually constructed “4-D” charts for such manual flight planning have since been replaced by numerical weather predictions that are used in computerized flight planning. Such flight planning is complicated by a lack of coordination among the ways vertical positions are related in aeronautical and meteorological practice that might well be alleviated by tailoring prognostic pressure pattern data for aeronautical use.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 43, Number 1
Pages:	1 - 8
Cite this article:	Export Citation https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-4296.1996.tb01913.x
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