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Jim,

Thanks for the additional link.

The big advantage of the NC-2 and follow-ons were that they were hardwired.
The HP's of that era were programmed by small cards. If you happened to
stand too close to a binnacle, or other area where there was a magnetic
field, they lost their programming.

When I took my USCG CELNAV licensing exam I was allowed to use a calculator
with trig functions, but more importantly, it had a base 60 convention so
you could add time which also allowed you to convert to arc.

I still have a Casio fx-900 which doesn't have a time to arc conversion
feature. But it has the instruction booklet with my penned in notations of
all the nav formulas. It doesn't power up. I also have two old Sharp's
laying around, but they wont power up either. Both have D.M.S / Deg keys.
They are an EL 520 G and a Sharp El 531 R. The 520 G has its instruction
booklet with my penned in notations as to nav formulas. On page 18 the
booklet describes "Time, Decimal, and Seagesimal calculations" which makes
me think this is the one I used. Anyhow, that feature alone made everything
very quick and easy.

Don't ask why I'm saving them, I just can't think of throwing them away.

Cheers,

Joel Jacobs



----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Thompson" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 6:30 AM
Subject: Comparison of navigation handheld calcuators


> For the record, here is a link to StarPath's document comparing handheld
> navigation calculators:
> http://www.starpath.com/catalog/accessories/starpilot/compare.pdf
>
> I just picked up a C$15 Sharp EL-520V calculator at Radio Shack for my CN
> learning phase for these reasons:
>
> 1. For backup if my Palm loses its charge or stops working.
> 2. I cannot justify buying a navigation handheld at this time.
> 3. I needed a handheld calculator for the upcoming CN exam that does trig
> functions because naturally they won't let me take my Palm handheld
computer
> into the CN exam (I have written PowerOne Graph templates for all the CN
and
> Piloting formulae, which of course would be cheating!).
>
> Anyway, this dirt-cheap Sharp has these features:
> - Solar and battery powered.
> - 2-line screen to allow limited editing.
> - Trig functions.
> - 6 memory locations.
> - Degrees-Minutes-Seconds feature which also works for
> Hours-Minutes-Seconds.
>
> Unfortunately it does not do metric/statute/nautical mile conversions too.
>
> Jim Thompson
> jim2@jimthompson.net
> www.jimthompson.net
> Outgoing mail scanned by Norton Antivirus
> -----------------------------------------

   

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