Well, I guess obviously, you have figured out that I got un lost. But it was a mini crisis to walk up to someone in my American accented English, and ask a Bloke, “hey, can you tell me where we are?” pretty strange looks came out of that question in the middle of the English Highland!!
As I said earlier, my first flying job after pilot training was in the A-7D Corsair. Talk about a marvel. I just have to mention the technology in this baby. It was a single seat attack fighter, so the workload could be horrendous. All kinds of nifty inventions were installed to take the load off the pilot, so he could concentrate on not flying into the ground. Of course, all these devices took management as well.
It had this system for navigation that used a slide film with a light behind it to project the map. The map would move (called a moving map display) with the light behind it to allow you to see it.
It “knew” where you were, based on this very complex invention that used three gyros. They would spin and when movement was detected, they would “know” to keep your planes position updated.
You would initialize the little beast on the ground as soon as you got the single engine started, and then it would take roughly 13 minutes to spin up to speed. It’s first known position would be given using coordinates of latitude and longitude. You would literally type them in, hit start and it would begin to set itself.
Phil Brewer's Blog 