NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Emergency Navigation
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Jul 13, 16:40 -0700
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2012 Jul 13, 16:40 -0700
I think "finding latitude is easy" is very relative. If you have a sextant (but I think the original statement of the challenge said "no instruments") and you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it's easy to take a Polaris shot. How about if you're in the southern hemisphere? As I recollect, one of the triumphs of the early Portuguese explorers working their way down the coast of Africa was their shore-side support team producing a table of the Sun's declination right before the equator was crossed and it became the only practical way to find latitude..
From: Brad Morris <bradley.r.morris@gmail.com>
To: NavList@fer3.com
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2012 1:14 PM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Emergency Navigation
Finding the latitude: easy.
Finding the longitude: fairly hard and in these exercises so far, involves memorization.
Asking somebody where you are: Simple and effective!Certainly better than +/-90 latitude and +/-180 longitude.Best Regards
Brad
