Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 25 February 2001

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PM:V-O-R is a directional navigational device. It tells you where you are in degrees. Let's say you're south of the V-O-R, then—directly south. Then your readout in the airplane would say you're on the 1-8-0 radial from the transmitter. The TACAN gives a distance from the transmitter, so there are TACAN's, and there are V-O-R's. Today, I'm not sure. There are...simply directional would be a V-O-R. Simply distance would be a TACAN.
INT:So VORTAC is a combination of the two?
PM:Right, and you can navigate by either the V-O-R or the TACAN by plotting. If you're on the 1-8-0 radial from one and the 2-7-0—you cross those and that's where you are. D-M-E [Distance Measuring Equipment]— same thing. If you're 30 miles from this one and 20 miles from this one, you draw circles and you're where they intersect properly.
INT:And that's what you were doing?
PM:That's what the navigator does. Although we didn't use VORTAC's we used other things. That was more for the pilot, but we didn't even have those read outs downstairs.
INT:Oh, okay. Those were quick references.
PM:Yeah. They're constant references. They always have one dialed in, and they're navigating from 1 or 2 of those all the time. The navigators would use celestial navigation and radar navigation using returns we'd see on the ground from the radar and things like that.
INT:Well, the pilots could look out and probably see the city lights and—
PM:Sure. Oh sure. Well, there were places in North Dakota where you didn't see many lights.
INT:Yeah.
PM:So we did our low approach, having received clearance to go out to that nav aid, and we were climbing out, and my memory is that at some point the tower called us and asked us to keep our eyes open for strange things.
INT:Were you hearing that on the intercom? Another question—do you guys hear all on radio communications?
PM:No.

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