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My main point is that it is very useful to change your programs and improve
them on the fly, i.e., on the device you are working on.

If you want to use canned software, then a Pilot may indeed have some neat
apps (sounds like it does from the posting below).  A Celesticomp may have
celestial nav done right, but in the spirit of this navigation mailing list,
it is nice to know the algorithms, and to really understand celestial
navigation,
and that usually only happens when you have implemented everything yourself.

Not everyone needs to implement their own celestial navigation software.  If
you are happy with a canned approach, great, but writing your own software
is, for some
of us, very rewarding.

Having a portable and fully programmable device allows you to do things that
Palm Pilots and Celesticomps can never do while in the field: be updated and
changed continuously, and THAT's where a good HP-48G+ handheld programmable
calculator comes into its own.  On the boat I've decided I want to know
something
new, or add some other aspect of navigation to my celstial calculations, and
voila,
I do the programming while I am sailing!

Of course you end up investing quite a bit in your own software, and that's
when you want to have a means of backing it all up.  The HP-48 has a cable
so that you
can plug it into a PC or Mac and backup memory to a desktop or laptop.

I hope that some of these new small Palmtop/Handheld PCs get programming
languages built into them so that they will become more useful for the kind
of work I like to do: program while crusing!

Dan
danallen@microsoft.com

-----Original Message-----
From  John [mailto:john@PSMAIL.NET]
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 1999 11:14 AM
To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM
Subject: Re: Calculators


Will,Dan, et al.
Someone has done it already. Found this on ZDnet's software site. The info I
cut and pasted below. Haven't had a chance to look it over and see what it
does/doesn't do. Few weeks back I was swinging through a web site that had a
_bunch_! of palm pilot programs that had to do with C nav.. Now that I want
to download and test them I cant find the ^*)^%&*^ website. I even looked in
my history folder (not a pretty site:-) There where some (a lot) of programs
that let you program your palm like it was an RPC  calc.
Hope this helps.  Oh BTW the name of the program is Pilnavig it comes as a
zipped file all of 61K.

John

PS Im all for doing it the easy way although I still want to be able to do
it the long (paper,pencil and tables) way.
****Start Paste******
The program consists of three modules, and offers sailing navigation help
that includes calculation of currents, winds, Great-Circles, Mid-Lat
sailing's, time/degree conversions, and general sight reductions. You can
perform complete sun sight reductions without an almanac.
*****End Paste******

 Will Martin
> I agree with your call on the HP calculators, however someone
> could write a
> CE program in VB for the palm pilot and make it a slick
> little navigational
> tool as well.

> >A Palm Pilot is not great because you cannot program it
> easily.  You need a
> >good programmable calculator if you want to do celestial
> navigation well.
> >
> >Dan
> >
>

   

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