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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: About French (in)accuracy. was :Lunars for dummies like me
From: Jan Kalivoda
Date: 2004 Sep 26, 20:00 +0200
From: Jan Kalivoda
Date: 2004 Sep 26, 20:00 +0200
Zorbec, Your response to Gerge is a bit disguising. The French navigator would be eccentric, if he would compute the local time by your iteration using the height -53' so as to fight his way to LAT. Using an almanac for finding the local time of the apparent sunrise/sunset would be more effective, as you prove yourself. Maybe your procedure is tested at French schools of navigation under Suvorov's password "hard taught at the exercising ground, easy going through the battlefield". (And another George's argument of the extremely unreliable refraction in very low altitudes remained unanswered by you.) But Jim Thompson asked about procedures of the early 19th century. And at that time, almanacs weren't giving times for sunrise/sunset for all latitudes (Connoissance des temps gave it for Paris in some volumes). Therefore the time sight of the morning Sun rising above 10? of altitude was the most reliable methode then and invariably used. Jan Kalivoda