NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Watch into Compass?
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2004 Feb 11, 10:56 -0800
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2004 Feb 11, 10:56 -0800
On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 10:27 AM, Royer, Doug wrote: > 1. Emergency or lifeboat Navigation This is an interesting topic. In a recent book on survival which I bought, (a US Air Force Training Manual entitled "Search and Rescue Survival Training" AF publication 64-4 which may be online as a PDF), there is some good material on emergency navigation. One technique that is presented which I remember learning in Boy Scouts is using a watch to determine North or South. In the Northern Hemisphere, one points the hour hand of a watch at the sun, and then the midpoint between the hour hand and noon is the direction of South. In the Southern Hemisphere the midpoint would point to North. If Daylight Savings Time is observed by the watch, then one hour should be subtracted from the actual time for the hour hand pointing. I seem to recall somebody declaring this procedure useless, but I do not remember the details. Is this okay for emergency navigation? Dan