Listnening to Aviation

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Listening to Aviation

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Since the beginning of aviation with the Wright Brothers, the need for communications
has reached from zero feet seal level to outer space. In the early days of aviation, radios
were big, bulky and very unreliable. The first airborne transceivers would take up a good portion
of the airplanes fuselage. The first uses for radio waves in aviation were strictly for navigation.
As technology progressed and with the invention of the transistor, radios became much more
smaller and applications became endless. When the majority of radios were being manufactured
“AM” (amplitude modulation) was the industry standard. Frequency Modulation or FM was not
invented till thousands of radios were already installed in aircraft around the world utilizing AM.
Since an ability to communicate with other aircraft was crucial and dual-mode (AM&FM) radios
hadn’t been perfected the industry decided to stay all the same. Many critics argue that the issue
was over the Doppler Effect that degraded FM as the aircraft passed the receiving antenna.