NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Silicon Beach Proposal
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Feb 21, 10:59 -0400
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Feb 21, 10:59 -0400
Silicon Beach Proposal Apparently other basic learner CN students followed the AP/DR/EP discussion with considerable interest. One emailed me off list to ask for my Carribean sight data so that he could practice working them up. I am also looking for free sight data to work up in practice for my exams. So following Dan Hogan's fine "Silicon Sea" tradition, I am working on a more basic website section called "Silicon Beach", intended to complement Silicon Sea. My plan is to post really basic sight data for learners to work up. The URL is http://jimthompson.net/boating/CelestialNav/SiliconBeach/SiliconBeach.htm . Many of us have to practice sight-taking from the shore, hence the name "Beach". (It is also named after the tropical place that I took those 150 sights from a couple of weeks ago, and cannot get out of my mind.) Silicon Beach will differ from Silicon Sea in that we'll post unrelated examples of very basic sights. - Silicon Beach will not be "real time", and the sights will not be part of a cruise. - SB will include sights from a shoreline or anchored vessel, typical for the early experience of many CN students. - We want to find sights for both hemispheres, and from both East and West of Greenwich. - However SB will also include sights taken from a moving vessel, if I can get some from somebody (Doug?). - Maybe eventually we can build a small practice cruise too, using a linked series of sights. Please feel free to send me some problems to post on the Beach. I think we are looking for the following categories of simple sights: - Simple LAN sights. - Polaris sights. - Basic twilight 3-body fix, morning and afternoon. - Morning and afteroon sun sights. - Run of 5 sights on the same rising or setting body, to practice getting an average. - UL and LL moon sights. - Planet sights, especially Venus. I like the idea of including some supplementary questions with wrinkles like, "Can you determine longitude from this LAN sight?", or "What would Zn be if the latitude was S instead of N?" so if your sight includes those possibilities, then send me those questions too. Jim Thompson jim2@jimthompson.net www.jimthompson.net Outgoing mail scanned by Norton Antivirus -----------------------------------------