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I love stuff like this, I just think its so cool. Similar to this are the large cement arrows across the US: http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2013-06-17/trans

by mslev 10y ago

I love stuff like this, I just think its so cool. Similar to this are the large cement arrows across the US: http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2013-06-17/transcontinental-air-mail-route-maphead-ken-jennings http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2013-06-17/transcontinenta...

hansjorg 10y ago
It's not mentioned in the article, but I guess this means that compass navigation wasn't possible at the time?
- mikestew 10y ago
  Not without aviation charts, which the article does mention were in short supply back in the early days of aviation. That, and I'm willing to bet that the licensing for pilots less than twenty years after the Wrights took off at Kitty Hawk was less than rigorous. So assuming that a licensed pilot, if such a thing even existed, was well-versed in navigation via charts and a compass was likely wrong.
  - danielvf 10y ago
    Even perfect charts would have been useless - the early airmail mail flew at night, in bad weather, with single pilots in open cockpits.
- danielvf 10y ago
  They did have compasses, but those do not give you your position. So if you've been flying for four hours at night, with a thirty mph wind, you could be 120 miles away from where you planned on being. You need some way of getting an absolute position, which these provided.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Windspeed is not unlike ocean currents, but since the speeds involved are a lot higher than in a boat errors in estimation accumulate way more quickly.
Bronze_Colossus 10y ago
Here is a few more picture more: http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/15/the-forgotten-giant-arrows-that-guide-you-across-america/ http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/15/the-forgotten-giant... I also find these kind of things cool. Forgotten structures that once served an important roll but now are mostly forgotten.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Interesting story and cool photos. Couldn't get to the end due to website design issues. Were these for horseback delivery or for airplanes? Terrible, terrible UX in the form of a jittery delayed popover that fills the entire phone screen. If you are going to do this (and I can't stand the fact that it actually works on many people), make it so easy to dismiss and fast to load that I close it instead of instictively hitting back.
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    Air mail. These were the days before good roads crossed the country, and where even an automotive trip was an Adventure which would take weeks. Horseback, you're going slow enough that you'd be able to see much smaller signs, and would be on a pretty well-trod path. Shortly thereafter, though, a few things happened that made the arrows pretty obsolete. Mapping of course, was a big one; you could now navigate a lot more reliably through unknown territory. More importantly, a network of radio beacons was set up. Charts had lists of radio beacons, with their frequencies. Pilots could tune in to hear them repeatedly chirp their identification in morse code, and use radio direction finders to set their heading accordingly. There's one other feature that was developed in that time period which also made pilots' navigation job a lot easier. The federal highway system meant that there were good, very visible, roads, serving as routing beacons in their own way. Pilots would, and still do for a lot of general aviation planes, route close to highways, because they're also a very obvious landmark that carves a path through the country.
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    For the air mail planes that used to fly through the night. Most of those arrows were painted in luminescent paint, and had a light tower nearby shining down on it so that the arrow glowed and was highly visible to the poor cold, tired mail plane pilot above.

by mslev 10y ago

hansjorg 10y ago

It's not mentioned in the article, but I guess this means that compass navigation wasn't possible at the time?

mikestew 10y ago
Not without aviation charts, which the article does mention were in short supply back in the early days of aviation. That, and I'm willing to bet that the licensing for pilots less than twenty years after the Wrights took off at Kitty Hawk was less than rigorous. So assuming that a licensed pilot, if such a thing even existed, was well-versed in navigation via charts and a compass was likely wrong.
- danielvf 10y ago
  Even perfect charts would have been useless - the early airmail mail flew at night, in bad weather, with single pilots in open cockpits.
danielvf 10y ago
They did have compasses, but those do not give you your position. So if you've been flying for four hours at night, with a thirty mph wind, you could be 120 miles away from where you planned on being. You need some way of getting an absolute position, which these provided.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Windspeed is not unlike ocean currents, but since the speeds involved are a lot higher than in a boat errors in estimation accumulate way more quickly.

Bronze_Colossus 10y ago

Here is a few more picture more: http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/15/the-forgotten-giant-arrows-that-guide-you-across-america/ http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/15/the-forgotten-giant... I also find these kind of things cool. Forgotten structures that once served an important roll but now are mostly forgotten.

nitrogen 10y ago
Interesting story and cool photos. Couldn't get to the end due to website design issues. Were these for horseback delivery or for airplanes? Terrible, terrible UX in the form of a jittery delayed popover that fills the entire phone screen. If you are going to do this (and I can't stand the fact that it actually works on many people), make it so easy to dismiss and fast to load that I close it instead of instictively hitting back.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Air mail. These were the days before good roads crossed the country, and where even an automotive trip was an Adventure which would take weeks. Horseback, you're going slow enough that you'd be able to see much smaller signs, and would be on a pretty well-trod path. Shortly thereafter, though, a few things happened that made the arrows pretty obsolete. Mapping of course, was a big one; you could now navigate a lot more reliably through unknown territory. More importantly, a network of radio beacons was set up. Charts had lists of radio beacons, with their frequencies. Pilots could tune in to hear them repeatedly chirp their identification in morse code, and use radio direction finders to set their heading accordingly. There's one other feature that was developed in that time period which also made pilots' navigation job a lot easier. The federal highway system meant that there were good, very visible, roads, serving as routing beacons in their own way. Pilots would, and still do for a lot of general aviation planes, route close to highways, because they're also a very obvious landmark that carves a path through the country.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  For the air mail planes that used to fly through the night. Most of those arrows were painted in luminescent paint, and had a light tower nearby shining down on it so that the arrow glowed and was highly visible to the poor cold, tired mail plane pilot above.