Navigation Articles Altimeters and Aerial Navigation Navigation Huge Discounts on navigation Free shipping. There are two major and well known forms of navigation; one is simple land navigation with a compass and a map, and the other is nautical navigation with far more complex tools and charts. But what most people don't know is that there is an art to navigation for aviators as well. Most people don't give much thought to this: after all, how can you get lost in the sky, with the entire land spread below you in a panoramic view like an oversized map? While this misconception has a grain of truth in it, there IS a tool essential for pilots to learn when they fly. This is the Altimeter. Altimeters are essentially pressure sensitive barometers that use the air pressure as a gauge for altitude. Where conventional barometers will directly display the air pressure in the surrounding atmosphere, altimeters are calibrated to show the aircraft's altitude based on the atmospheric pressure detected. Gpsstockroom- Pay Less for Your GPS Here GPSStockroom Offers a Lowest Price Guarantee for 1200 GPS Products. Altimeters aren't foolproof, however, and changes in air temperature and weather can throw an altimeter off unless the gauges are calibrated beforehand to take these into account. This makes the need to accurately forecast weather even more important for aircraft pilots than for, say, land and sea farers. Navigation Navigation at a great deal! Navigation on eBay Motors. The major reason an altimeter is needed is because aircraft which fly low run the risk of causing damage to cities they pass over. Even worse, flying at night time, when vision is impeded, and running at the speed of an aircraft, it is all too possible that without a working altimeter. An aircraft will fly too low and crash into something like, say, a mountain range or a tall building that they were supposed to be flying over. Bojangle'S Bargain BARN CAR NAV Systems YOUR STORE ON eBay for DEALS on CAR NAV SYSTEMS & BLUETOOTH MIRRORS. Flying too high, on the other hand, is also a potential problem for some aircraft that aren't designed to take the hull stress caused by the lighter atmosphere. Maneuvering conventional aircraft in thinner air is also much more difficult, and can cause potentially fatal loss of control. Lastly, some aircraft's air supplies aren't equipped to handle extremely thin atmospheres, so flying this high can literally cause pilots and their passengers to black out. Navigation Systems Quickly search merchant prices. 100,000 Stores. Deals. Reviews. To get over some of the problems of regular altimeters, radar altimeters are used in some civilian and most military aircraft. These differ from their pressure sensitive cousins in that they measure altitude by timing the intervals between sending and receiving radio signals from a ground based control tower. The biggest advantage to this method is that weather patterns won't affect their readings; however, unexpected changes in terrain when thrown off course, like veering over a mountain range, won't be detected by radar altimeters, where conventional ones will be able to detect the change in air pressure caused by the sudden increase in landmass below and help the pilot adjust accordingly. Truly Cross-Browser JavaScript Menus Create stylish & truly cross-browser JavaScript menus in just minutes. Use AllWebMenus, save time and money. Most well equipped aircraft sport both types of altimeters, letting the radar altimeter also act as a receiver of the control tower's signals on the ground, essentially making a homing beacon for the aircraft to head towards. When flying over areas outside the range of the radar beacons, however, these aircraft then switch to their conventional altimeters to determine altitude. Navigation We Offer 3,500+ GPS Choices. Save On navigation. Aerial navigation is much simpler than land or sea based navigation in one major respect: most modern aircraft will have digitizes maps synchronized with electronic compasses to do their work for them; where land based travelers have to calculate their position on a map the hard way, and sea farers have to go through dozens of different charts, these computers make the life of aviators much easier in terms of determining their position on a map. When flying over friendly territory, the radar beacons also act as reference points for these computers to determine the location of an aircraft. Navigation Explore 5,000+ GPS Choices. Save On navigation. Recently, modern aviation has received another boon in the form of the GPS, or global positioning system, which utilizes satellites to track the location of an aircraft from space. But even with this new technology, altimeters remain essential because, while a GPS can provide an overhead view of the aircraft and position it on a digitized map, the altimeter is still what determines how high (or low) the aircraft is flying, letting the pilot keep it at a safe cruising altitude. Mojosgear - For All Your Flying Needs Shop online for gifts, survival gear, navigation, carabiners, quicklinks, portable weather electronics, books, videos, paragliding and hanggliding equipment and accessories. Ainuddin Mohamad is the Webmaster of the Online Reading Center at http://onlinereadingcenter.com which features online reading resources.