EAA493 Mailing List: Fw: A Bit of Aviation History

[Gerald Hatch (gf_hatch]

On Tuesday, June 23, 2015 8:44 AM, Richard <kj5rx1 [at] suddenlink.net> wrote:

 

70ft Cement Arrows

All over the country, 70-foot concrete arrows can be found in remote locations.

Follow them, and they’ll point you out of the desert.

They come courtesy of the US Postal Service’s Air Force and will point you all

the way across the continental United States.

They were constructed in 1924 to guide postal planes in the right direction

as they carried mail from coast to coast.

These old planes couldn’t rely on radio as much at the time, so they used these

arrows, along with beacon towers, to navigate.

The arrows and beacons bisect the United States from San Francisco to

New York City .

The towers were 50 feet tall and fixed with gas lights that could be seen from

10 miles away, in order to help lost pilots find their way. This is a model of the

arrows and towers in their heyday.

World War II brought new advances in radio technology that effectively

made the towers and arrows system obsolete. The towers were mostly

dismantled.

There has been an effort to restore and preserve some of them, however.

Like this one in New Mexico complete with its generator shack.

This is a pretty cool piece of history, even if it was short lived. To think of those early postal pilots navigating

like this from coast to coast is mind blowing.

 

 

 

 

 

---

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2014.0.4800 / Virus Database: 4365/10052 - Release Date: 06/19/15