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Yes, I put up that web site to provide authoritive information about
the process and accuracy of celestial navigation as practiced in the
air in the 1937 time frame to allow everyone to evaluate for
themselves TIGHAR's hypothesis. The excerpted texts were contemporary
or nearly contemporary navigation standard reference works. Read
through the documents, especially the single LOP landfall procedure;
accuracy of sextant LOP; and accuracy of DR position topics:

http://www.geocities.com/fredienoonan/topics.html

and you will see that the celestial navigation using the single LOP
landfall procedure had suficent accuracy to locate an island as small
as Howland. This technique was taught to thousands of WW 2 navigators
and used sucessfully many, many times by those navigators to find
island landfalls.  A knowledge of this technique is still required by
federal aviation regulations and this knowledge must be demonstrated
on the flight test for a Flight Navigator's Certificate. Look at item
34 on  Appendix A to Federal Aviation Regulation Part 63 available
here:


http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=7901ef0a7d09b0a9b8b7132ad615a8eb&rgn=div9&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.1.3.3.1.7.13&idno=14

If the technique didn't work it would not have been taught as a
standard technique for many years and it would not be on the Flight
Navigator test today.

My "pet theory" is that they were utilizing the single LOP landfall
procedure to find Howland as evidenced by their reporting being on the
"157-337� LOP" which was obviously a sun line since the azimuth of the
sun was 067� from the time of sunrise at Howland and remaining the
same for almost an hour later, the time period of their approach to
the island. Based on the known accuracy of this technique (and I have
done it many times myself in flight) they should have been very close
to Howland at the time of fuel exhaustion and I have no explanation
for their failure to find the island.

I do know that they are not on Nikumoro (TIGHAR's hypothesis) which is
380 NM from Howland on a true course of 169�. TGHAR's hypothesis is
that they continued to follow this LOP all the way to that island
(formerly, Gardner Island.) As anybody with any knowldge of CN knows,
that during the three hour period necessary to fly from the vicinity
of Howland to Nikumorro the azimuth of the sun would have changed
significantly and there would be no LOP to follow to the vicinity of
Nikumorro.

gl


On Jun 19, 11:32 pm, "Greg R."  wrote:
> --- glap...@pacbell.net wrote:
> > Here are excerpts from the 1937 N.A The first page shows the
> > time of transit of the moon of the Greenwich meridian and contains
> > a "Var. per hour" column, variation?
>
> Sounds "probable" to me...
>
> Thanks also for the Earhart/Noonan connection - is that your site by
> any chance?. Up until recently that was another pet interest of mine
> (and seems like I've seen your name pop up on the TIGHAR mailing list
> too).
>
> But after reading "Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved" I have to concur
> with the author's conclusion that after all of those long hours from
> Lae (New Guinea) they were nowhere near where they thought they were
> (probably different winds aloft than they'd counted on), ran out of
> fuel, and had to ditch at sea.
>
> Even more mind-boggling (at least in 20/20 hindsight) is that they'd
> try to locate the tiny Howland Island just on DR/celestial alone
> (neither of them apparently knew how to work the radio
> direction-finder), and if I remember right they also weren't able to
> communicate with the Itasca on the frequencies that they'd planned on
> (seems like they either didn't have voice or CW capability, I don't
> remember exactly right now).
>
> What's your "pet theory" on the Earhart mystery?
>
> --
> GregR
>
> --- glap...@pacbell.net wrote:
>
> > Here are excerpts from the 1937 N.A The first page shows the time of
> > transit of the moon of the Greenwich meridian and contains a "Var.
> > per hour" column, variation?
>
> >http://www.geocities.com/fredienoonan/almanac-1937-136.JPG
>
> > The second page contains moon data showing GHA and DEC and has
> > separate increments tables for each day based on the the dec change
> > and GHA change rates for that particular day. no "v" or "d"
> > correction factors are shown.
>
> >http://www.geocities.com/fredienoonan/almanac.html
>
> > This third link takes you to a site I put up with with excerpts of
> > various navigation texts.
>
> >http://www.geocities.com/fredienoonan/
>
> > gl
>
> > On Jun 19, 9:00 pm, frankr...@HistoricalAtlas.net wrote:
> > > Greg, you asked:
> > > "And maybe that's going to be about as good an answer as we can
> > hope for
> > > at this point in time - does anyone know when "d" and "v" terms
> > first
> > > showed up in the NA as such? There might be more elaboration about
> > what
> > > the abbreviations stood for when they were first introduced."
>
> > > Yes, that's basically what I was providing you in the previous
> > message. The
> > > labels "v" and "d" first appear in the "Abridged Nautical Almanac"
> > in 1952.
> > > This is the earliest date when the official British almanac
> > included GHA.
> > > This had been introduced 18 years earlier in the American Nautical
> > Almanac,
> > > and it was also widely used in the various air almanacs. As I said,
> > the
> > > concept of the interpolation constant at the foot of each column on
> > the
> > > almanac page was already present in the American almanac where it
> > was called
> > > a "code". I also checked a couple of commercial British almanacs
> > from this
> > > period (the commercial British almanacs adopted GHA well before the
> > official
> > > British almanac). They use a similar principle but again not
> > labeled v and
> > > d. So my best guess right now is that the first use of these
> > specific labels
> > > for the interpolation data is the British "Abridged Nautical
> > Almanac" in
> > > 1952. Here's the full text from the explanation in the AbNA for
> > 1953:
> > >  "Interpolation between the tabulated hourly values is provided for
> > by
> > > comprehensive interpolation tables, printed on coloured pages at
> > the end of
> > > the book, giving for every minute and every second the increments
> > of G.H.A.
> > > corresponding to the mean rate of increase for the Sun (15�
> > precisely), the
> > > constant rate for Aries (15� 02'.46) and the minimum rate for the
> > Moon (14�
> > > 19'.0). The variations from the means are so small for the Sun that
> > they
> > > have been deliberately ignored; the tabulated hourly values of the
> > Sun's
> > > G.H.A. have been adjusted so that the error thus caused is a
> > minimum. These
> > > variations cannot be ignored for the planets or for the Moon, and
> > > corrections have to be made for the excess (v) in hourly motion
> > over that
> > > adopted in the main interpolation tables."
>
> > > So there's an answer: v stands for "excess". :-)
>
> > > In the next paragraph:
> > > "The corrections for these VARIATIONS [...] are taken directly from
> > the
> > > interpolation tables with argument v" and "A similar procedure is
> > used to
> > > interpolate the declinations of the Sun, Moon and planets; here d,
> > the
> > > hourly DIFFERENCE, is given without sign on the daily pages" (I
> > have
> > > capitalized those two words for emphasis). So if you must assign a
> > meaning
> > > to v and d, I think the best bets are "variation" (of the rate of
> > change of
> > > GHA from the selected mean rate) and "difference," but the catch is
> > that the
> > > person who wrote this explanatory section may very well have
> > invented those
> > > origins on the spot.
>
> > > By 1958, when the modern Nautical Almanac was formed by the merger
> > of the
> > > American Nautical Almanac and the Abridged Nautical Almanac (they
> > kept their
> > > separate names until 1960), the explanation simply refers to v and
> > d values
> > > with no hint of any etymology. Same in Bowditch of the same era. I
> > think
> > > this is intentional. The labels v and d really are not intended to
> > "stand
> > > for" anything.
>
> > >  -FER
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