Key Terms Flashcards
A device used to measure the rate of an aircraft’s rotation about its vertical axis through 360 degrees. A rate gyro is affected by the roll or pitch of the aircraft but aligns itself with the fore and aft line.
Rate Gyro
A type of actuator used on the flight controls of large aircraft.
Power Control Actuator
The compound of an ILS that provides course guidance to the runaway.
localizer
The portion of a radio wave reflected from the ionosphere
sky wave
A wire that runs from the top of the fuselage to the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer, used for radio communication and navigation purposes.
wire antenna
Radar beacon transponder. A radar transmitter-receiver that transmits a coded signal every time it is interrogated by a ground radar facility.
transponder
A type of radio wave that is transmit- ted above 30 MHz.
Space waves travel in a straight line and do not bounce off the ionosphere.
Space waves are used to communicate with satellites in orbit.
space wave-
A type of radar transceiver installed in military aircraft that sends an identifi- cation signal to the primary radar to distinguish a friendly aircraft from an enemy aircraft.
Developed during World War II, this system has been adopted by Air Traffic Control (ATC) to interrogate Mode C and Mode S transponders. Known in military aviation as IFF.
secondary radar-
A contraction of selective calling refer- ring to an automatic signaling system used in air- craft to notify a particular aircraft of an incoming call.
SELCAL-
A type of interference signal introduced by the United States Department of Defense to degrade the accuracy of the GPS signal for national security reasons. It was deactivated May 1, 2000, which resulted in a more accurate GPS signal
selective availability (SA) -
- An electronic device that converts DC into AC. 2. An electronic circuit that produces AC with frequencies determined by the inductance and capacitance in the circuit.
oscillator-
Aircraft equipment that makes use of the reflection of radio waves from the ground to determine the height of the aircraft above the surface.
radar altimeter-
A device that measures the height of an aircraft above the terrain by means of the transmissions of a continuous wave, constant amplitude, frequency modulated signal. The difference in the frequency of the reflected signals at any time is read on the RA indicator in feet above the ground.
radio altimeter (RA) -
A device that, by measuring the time inter- val between transmission and reception of radio pulses and correlating the angular orientation of the radiated antenna beam or beams in azimuth and/or elevation, provides information on range, azimuth, and/or elevation of objects in the path of the trans- mitted pulses.
radar -
A radar system using only a transmitter, receiver, antenna, and cathode-ray tube dis- play to indicate radar traffic. No transponder signal is added. Indication on display is referred to as a primary return.
primary radar -