On (17 May 95) Bill Grimsley wrote to Keith Richardson...



 BG> Keith, at 20:00 on May 15 1995, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...



 BG> Don't the bigger airports all use ILS now?  If you deviate even 

 BG> marginally from the actual approach, all hell breaks loose.



 KR> dinosaur technology boy! we were using ils to lock autopilots for

 KR> autolandings 30 years ago. 



 BG> Might be old technology, but there's no arguing that it works.



to a large degree yes, but the old vhf/uhf ils had/has some problems

with multipath causing beam bends. airports are rated individually on

the quality of their ils and the minimum visibility for landing set on

that measurement.



 KR> trouble is that ils needs long straight approaches the more modern

 BG> systems 

 KR> like interscan let you have much more flexible approach patterns.



 BG> Dunno much about ILS these days, but I'd assumed that it was used as a

 BG> matter of course on commercial flights, not just at night or during poor

 BG> visibility.  Rod tells me that VFR is still pretty common though.



i think that you would find that only the toy airlines fly vfr, the big

stuff flies by ifr rules as a matter of course.



                        Keith



... Cache me if you can



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