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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: CELNAV .pdf file
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2003 Dec 24, 18:16 EST
From: Frank Reed CT
Date: 2003 Dec 24, 18:16 EST
"Celnav is a manual on celestial navigation produced by the US Coast Guard. "
Interesting.
I don't think I mentioned this before. I did a series of hour-long planetarium lectures last fall for the navigation students in this year's class from the US Coast Guard Academy which is located in New London, CT. They were NOT enjoying themselves. In a round room, you can hear small talk and whispers very easily. These students were angry that they were being forced by the Academy to learn im-practical celestial navigation. And I sympathized with them. Unless someone (or something) zaps GPS and the other satellite navigation networks, celestial is nearly useless to them. They're still doing a full-blown tables method with HO229. I could understand teaching Noon Sun, and teaching it again and again and again. But these students studying tables-based celestial navigation in 2003 are in the same boat as students who were still being forced to learn how to reduce lunars back in 1903. It's pointless torture.
But we still had fun, and I even told them about lunars. :-)
Frank E. Reed
[X] Mystic, Connecticut
[ ] Chicago, Illinois
Interesting.
I don't think I mentioned this before. I did a series of hour-long planetarium lectures last fall for the navigation students in this year's class from the US Coast Guard Academy which is located in New London, CT. They were NOT enjoying themselves. In a round room, you can hear small talk and whispers very easily. These students were angry that they were being forced by the Academy to learn im-practical celestial navigation. And I sympathized with them. Unless someone (or something) zaps GPS and the other satellite navigation networks, celestial is nearly useless to them. They're still doing a full-blown tables method with HO229. I could understand teaching Noon Sun, and teaching it again and again and again. But these students studying tables-based celestial navigation in 2003 are in the same boat as students who were still being forced to learn how to reduce lunars back in 1903. It's pointless torture.
But we still had fun, and I even told them about lunars. :-)
Frank E. Reed
[X] Mystic, Connecticut
[ ] Chicago, Illinois
