NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Paul Dolkas
Date: 2013 Jan 13, 10:47 -0800
Good point.
The original question mentioned the story took place in the Sierra mountains, so I assumed that there would be lots of landmarks on the horizon. I guess if I were writing the novel (and I wanted to make it more interesting by using CN rather than my more pedestrian method), I would add something to the storyline eliminating the possibility of using these. There are, after all, lots of Boy Scouts and former Boy Scouts that would be scratching their heads otherwise. Maybe it takes place in the desert rather than the mountains.
Paul Dolkas
From: navlist-bounce@fer3.com [mailto:navlist-bounce@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Örjan Sandström
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 6:30 AM
To: NavList@fer3.com
Subject: [NavList] Re: Position from a photo
Paul, In places the dessert is about as featureless as the ocean, if this was such a place I can quite understand the need for celestial, actually it was frequently used in WWII, mainly by engineers and LRDG, LRDG (Long Range Desert Group) are "famous" for using celestial when navigating desserts, it was more or less only way to find the cashes of fuel/water/ammo... laid up.
I know only too well how frustrating "exact" position in featureless landscape can be, I frequently go skiing on the sea ice, only "features" guiding is "stationary" clouds, sun (if up) stars...
Yes i try keeping a decent DR, it does not take much of a compass and distance error to be out quite a bit after a trip of say 50km or more, main reason distance is so hard is that ice is NOT all flat and smooth, ridges and snow pushed into heaps by wind... and still no features to grab hold of and use to navigate, true a ridge can be seen for 5km or so, but few hours/days later it is buried in drifting snow or even gone (ice is constantly moving).
GPS is quite welcome assistance.
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