NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Navigation Calculators
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2008 Jun 7, 21:33 -0600
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2008 Jun 7, 21:33 -0600
On Jun 7, 2008, at 12:34 PM, FJones wrote: > Does anyone on the list use navigation calculators? If so, which > model? I use the current line of HP programmable calculators, the HP-48/49/50 series. I have programmed them myself using their built-in RPL language. They have very long battery life and excellent numeric accuracy. Models can be bought for a little over $100 US I believe. The learning curve for the RPL language is a bit high but it pays off. Here is my celestial navigation program in RPL. If you know how to do it, you can download this ASCII text into any HP-48 or HP-49 or HP-50 calculator and you will have a directory with various buttons defined to calculate the position of the sun, enter sextant angles, and determine position. It contains a long-term almanac and sight- reduction tables. It uses a lot of RPL built in functions that can do unit conversions, polynomial evaluation, root finders, graphing, etc, hence it is remarkably compact. (ANA stands for Anacortes, WA where I used this program a lot.) I am afraid I can offer no other documentation - you will need to learn RPL and just read the code to see what it does. -- Dan --- %%HP: T(3)A(D)F(.); DIR ANA \<< 48.502 'LAT' STO 122.603 'LONG' STO 8 'TZ' STO DATE TIME OVER OVER TSTR 5 24 SUB ROT ROT CALC ALT "ALT" \- >TAG AZ "AZ" \->TAG \>> NB \<< 47.48 'LAT' STO 121.7975 'LONG' STO 8 'TZ' STO DATE TIME OVER OVER TSTR 5 24 SUB ROT ROT CALC ALT "ALT" \- >TAG AZ "AZ" \->TAG \>> SEXTANT \<< "DATE mm.ddyyyy" DATE \->STR INPUT OBJ\-> "TIME hh.mmss" "" INPUT OBJ\-> CALC "HT ft" "" INPUT OBJ\- > .3048 * \v/ -.0293 * "ANGLE:" "" INPUT OBJ\-> + DUP DUP DUP 4.4 + 7.31 SWAP / + TAN -.0167 SWAP / SWAP COS .0024 * + + 16 60 / + ALT - '60_nmi' * \>> AH \<< "DATE mm.ddyyyy" DATE \->STR INPUT OBJ\-> "TIME hh.mmss" "" INPUT OBJ\-> CALC "ANGLE:" "" INPUT OBJ\-> 2 / DUP DUP DUP 4.4 + 7.31 SWAP / + TAN -.0167 SWAP / SWAP COS .0024 * + + ALT - '60_nmi' * \>> SNSET \<< 0 'T348' STO \<< DATE T348 DUP 1 DISP CALC ALT \>> 'T348' { 15 21 } ROOT HMS\-> \->HMS 'T348' PURGE \>> EQT \<< \Ge 2 / TAN SQ \-> y \<< L 2 * SIN y * M SIN 2 * E * - 2 L * COS M SIN * 4 * E * y * + L 4 * SIN y SQ * 2 / - M 2 * SIN E SQ * 5 * 4 / - R\- >D \>> \>> CALC \<< HMS\-> TZ + \-> D t \<< 1.012 D DDAYS t 12 - 24 / + 36525 / 'T' STO [ .0003032 36000.76983 280.46646 ] T PEVAL 360 MOD 'L' STO [ -.0001537 35999.05029 357.52911 ] T PEVAL 360 MOD 'M' STO [ -.0000001267 -.000042037 .016708634 ] T PEVAL 'E' STO [ -.000014 -. 004817 1.914602 ] T PEVAL M SIN * [ -.000101 .019993 ] T PEVAL M 2 * SIN * + .000289 M 3 * SIN * + 'C' STO L C + '\Gh' STO [ .001813 -. 00059 -46.815 84381.448 ] T PEVAL 3600 / '\Ge' STO 125.04 T 1934.136 * - '\GW' STO \Gh .00569 - \GW SIN .00478 * - '\Gh' STO \Ge .00256 \GW COS * + '\Ge' STO \Gh COS \Ge COS \Gh SIN * R\->C ARG 360 + 360 MOD '\Ga' STO \Ge SIN \Gh SIN * ASIN '\Gd' STO [ -2.58331180573E-8 . 000387933 0 280.46061837 ] T PEVAL T 36525 * 360.985647366 * + 360 MOD 'GST' STO GST LONG - \Ga - 'LHA' STO LAT SIN \Gd SIN * LAT COS \Gd COS * LHA COS * + ASIN 'ALT' STO LHA COS LAT SIN * \Gd TAN LAT COS * - LHA SIN R\->C ARG 180 + 'AZ' STO \>> \>> LAT 48.502 LONG 122.603 TZ 8 AZ 255.17798638 ALT 12.7522638832 LHA 70.540901144 \Ga .000618856 \Gd 2.68316750856E-4 \Gh 360.00067452 \Ge 23.4400413709 T 3.21571982661E-2 L 358.15035347 \GW 62.8436051744 M 75.15770741 E 1.67072820768E-2 C 1.86026412241 GST 193.14452 ETG \<< CL\GS 1 12 FOR i i .012003 + 0 CALC EQT \GS+ i .152003 + 0 CALC EQT \GS+ NEXT BARPLOT \>> END --- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---