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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Latitude at noon.
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Feb 1, 16:55 EST
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Feb 1, 16:55 EST
I'll turn that around and predict that Latitude and Longitude by Noon
Sun will soon be the ONLY type of sight worked by hand. Tables like H.O.229 will
fade into history as those few who work LOPs complete the switch over to
electronic calculation (a switch that began decades ago and is really already
99% complete). But Noon Sun will be around forever. Well... we can hope,
right?
-FER
The tables will fade into US merchant marine history, or into the
hands of the fans, when the USCG ceases to require them to be used for their
oceans exams. Right now, you either use HO 229 (249 is not allowed in
the room) or a regular trig calculator to do your reductions. I tended to
use both, my calculator with the formulae checked with the tabular
numbers.
I caused quite a problem in 1998 when I started using HO 249 Vol I for all
of my star reductions instead of HO 229 forms. They never expected anyone
to learn that method. The next year HO 249 was acceptable only for
pre-computing stars, and not their reduction.
Jeremy
