h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Our mobile home is right at the southeast corner of Ireland. This is such a distinctive landmark that the transatlantic flights use it as a reference point. At about 6:30am every morning I can hear one flying overhead, very high up.

It's interesting how in this age of high tech communications pilots still rely on visual landmarks.

A few years ago I was a passenger in a 5-seater flight from Oxford to Amsterdam. We had a pilot and co-pilot, and, not having all the state-of-the-art geo-location devices, they navigated by means of a roadmap. ("That's the A5 down there, isn't it?" "No, because that has to be the Vauxhall factory - that's Luton. It must be the M1" "Ah, I should have turned left at Hemel", etc)

A friend of my father's told this story. He worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers. One day, he and his coworker, a pilot, were doing some sort of survey over Galveston Bay, in a boustrophedonic* pattern. Around noon they were feeling a bit peckish. The pilot said he knew of a nice little burger joint near the small landing strip just outside of
Baytown, (a medium sized city on the North shore of Galveston Bay). He pointed down to the small landing strip. My dad's friend agreed so he set course for a landing. When they were only a mile or two away from the landing strip, the pilot suddenly increased throttle and pulled up hard. My dad's friend was quite shaken by this and asked what was wrong. The pilot leveled out and pointed down to the landing strip and asked if he noticed anything wrong about the runway.

That's when my dad's friend noticed "planes" taxiing very quickly up the runway but not taking off.


It wasn't a runway, but a drag strip. The municipal airport was about 10 miles away.










*http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-bou1.htm

Funny stories.

Now, I know boustrophedon, but only from old manuscripts. to know the word has a more practical use.

I learned it from the scanner I use at work (scanning Apollo panoramic film). When I start up the scanner software, I see a message indicating "Boustrophedonic scanning enabled".

Oh, now THAT was a geek with a big vocabulary.

In Northern Ireland a few years ago, a Ryanair plane landed on a military airstrip, mistaking it for a commercial airport a few miles away.

Pilots of small civilian aircraft often navigate by following roadways, not least, given one is following a lightly used country highway rather than a major freeway or turnpike, one has the option of making an emergency landing on the roadway if it becomes necessary.

Aren't there reports of crows navigating by following roads too?

TRiG.

I misunderstood the first post for a second and thought that your mobile home was the landmark they were looking for. Do you have a painted on the roof?