Part IV: Navigation & Communications

Like Part I, Part IV of From The Ground Up contains three major sections: Air Navigation, Radio, and Radio Navigation.

Man is a restless soul; travel and curiosity have always been two of his most cultivated and persevering habits. To make it possible to move about on this great terrestrial sphere, he must have some master plan to enable him to define position, direction and distance. Air Navigation explains how pilots use a combination of methods to navigate their way to their destinations.

Radio is the modern magic genie that creates invisible traffic arteries in the skies, whose voice reaches out to the airman in the overcast from the unseen world below. A pilot should make full use of his radio equipment but should forget neither the simple traffic rules and signals that apply, nor the practice of elementary navigation, should his radio some day fail to function. Radios can, and do, fail and your insurance against becoming hopelessly lost is your conscientiousness in practising basic pilotage.