NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Bowditch sightreduction table (Ageton?)
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Apr 9, 10:14 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Apr 9, 10:14 -0700
But at the same time, we have to trust the NA to have accurate numbers in it, we have to trust our sight reduction method (whether tables or calculator) to work properly, etc, etc. Perhaps it's because we have faith that an organization that's been producing NAs (or their predecessors) for two centuries or more have "got it right" while who know if we can trust Garmin, Trimble, etc. Or maybe it's just some element of human psychology that says "I have more confidence in an answer I somehow helped produce than in one that just appears on a black box"
From: Alan S <alan202@verizon.net>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2012 7:54 PM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Bowditch sightreduction table (Ageton?)
Lu:Re the following observation you offered, "Your comments about slide rules reminds me why so many (especially on this list) are more comfortable with celestial than with GPS. With celestial navigation we enter a series of numbers from the NA and our own environment (ie, Lat, Long, and time) and we can see those numbers evolve step-by-step into a line of position. With GPS, the magic happens inside the black box and all you get is a pair of numbers. It all depends on how much we trust the programmers of the black box to get it all right."Funny thing is the way you describe it is exactly how it works.----------------------------------------------------------------
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