NavList:

On 05 May 2013 @ 13:47 -0700 Frank Reed wrote:
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William Hawes, you wrote:
"This time I'll quote directly from no less an authority than the Admiralty Manual of Navigation Volume 2"

It's an authoritative work, yes, but the person who wrote that section may not understand why it's done. Let's not forget that the "manual" of navigation is just that, and its various sections were written by mere mortals.
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Frank, you are spot-on. Notwithstanding that the 10th Edition of 2011 has a Foreword by Admiral Sir Trevor Soar KCB OBE, Commander in Chief Fleet, near the back of the book it states that the current 10th Edition (and the other editions since 1998) were authored by a retired Lieutenant Commander from the Royal Navy. The author is a Fellow of The Nautical Institute and, since 2009, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation (of which George Huxtable was also a member for over 20 years). I'll withhold the name of the author of this edition, because, in spite of his credentials, I have a few negative comments with respect to this edition compared to earlier Admiralty Manuals of Navigation with which I am familiar.

First off, I was amazed at the number of typos in the document. Proofreading seems to have been left very much on the back burner. Secondly the document is not very readible. It seems like they can't put 3 or 4 sentences together without an article number or subsection number - very often referenced to other places in the book. In fact it is in the overly complicated referencing system where many of the typos occur.

Finally the 10 Edition is slim compared to older Manuals of Navigation. Alas it is the history and theory that has suffered from this volume downsizing. Perhaps, because the NAVPAC software package has become the primary method of site reduction, they considered that no one was overly interested in historic procedures or theory. I know that won't fit well with NavList members.

So, given the above, perhaps I was a bit overenthusastic in my use of the grandiose words "no less an authority" when I quoted the manuals definition of True (Theoretical) sunrise. I note that they never even used the traditional word "Ampliture" for this procedure.
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-FER
PS: Of course, I could be wrong. Mere mortal and all that... :)
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Not at all.

wmh (an extremely mere mortal)
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