Surely many people have flown by plane at least once, and even if not, it will be difficult to find a person who has never seen an airport runway in his life (at least in a movie). If so, then he had to see the mysterious markings with numbers and a pedestrian "zebra". Today it's time to figure out what all this is for.
Although each airport has a control room with state-of-the-art navigation aids, each runway has additional means of communicating important information to pilots. The most important (and at the same time noticeable) means of delivering information were and remain huge numbers. They range from 1 to 36. Numbers are printed on both sides of the runway. Many people mistakenly believe that this is some kind of serial number of the site or the airport as a whole.
In fact, everything (as always) is quite simple. The two-digit numbers printed on the runway indicate the location of a particular strip relative to the magnetic pole of our planet. Thus, the numbers give pilots an idea of which magnetic heading the strip is to refer to. It is worth explaining that the magnetic course is determined by the direction of the magnetic field lines at a specific point on the globe. All of this is very important, since the locations of the geographic north and magnetic north poles do not match. The difference is several degrees.
In general, the direction is always measured in degrees from 0 to 360, but on the runway, for convenience, the numbers are reduced to tens. Thus, if the direction is 80 degrees, then the number 08 is applied to the strip, and if it is 140 degrees, then the number 14 will be applied. The size of the figure is 3x9 meters. They are perfectly visible even from great heights. In this case, different numbers will be at different ends of the strip. This is because the direction will be different from different ends. This can be clearly seen from a great height.
It is also worth adding that there are other important markings on the runways. So, if there are several sites at the airport, then they will be marked with the letters L, R and C, which means "left", "right" and "central", respectively. Also on the lane you can see the markings that resemble a pedestrian zebra crossing. In fact, this is a special designation that allows the pilot to judge the width of the strip. For example, 4 lanes - 18 meters, 6 lanes - 23 meters, 8 lanes - 30 meters.
Finally, each lane has a landing aiming marker that shows where to touch the ground with the chassis.
Want to see even more interesting things? How about you find out how a structure will appear at the best airport in the world in the spring, because of which you can even forget about your flightso cool.