NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Ratio vertical distance approximations
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Apr 21, 17:25 -0700
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Apr 21, 17:25 -0700
I've been thinking over the last few days about a method to measure vertical distance off an object using ratio.I'll throw this out to you guys to see if you think it has merit.I was thinking and schemeing while out in the mountains about measureing distances by vertical sextant angles.I'm thinking of useing unknown heights of objects over unknown distances.I was wondering if one could use the ratio of a known height and distance and an unknown height to find the distance to the unknown object. Here is what I was thinking: Take a rod of a measured height (say 24 inches)and set it a known distance(say 60 inches)from yourself.Use the sextant to measure the angle.Pick an object in the distance(you don't know its' height or distance from you)and take its' angular measurement.By useing the ratio of the 2 do you think it possible to calculate the distance?I'll do some work on this tonight and see if I can get it to work in theory and bring it to you tomorrow for your thoughts.I can't stop thinking about this all day today.
