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Thank you Andrew.

I would suggest that possibly a satisfactory model might be a website
where the current state of the project could be on view to all, with a
separate section for suggested modifications, else a plethora  :-)
of emails might ensue without benefit or structure.

Courtney


On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 12:47, Andrew Corl wrote:
> Dear Frank, Courtney, Jim, and anyone else who cares to read this
>
> >How many books  constitute a plethora?  More seriously, which books have
> >you enjoyed?  Which did you find less satisfactory? Can you pinpoint any
> >features that worked  or didn't work for you??
>
> For me a plethora of books is over a dozen, and portions of a dozen more.
> Specific things that did or did not work out is hard to pinpoint.  I would
> come to a point where I was frustrated and throw a book across the room.
> What I need for learning is a sort of step by step process to do things.
> Once I have the process down and can reference one statement, I should be
> able to do fine with my navigation.
>
> Courtney wrote:
> >" I'd like to suggest a group project  of
> >composing a "minimal" narrative of the essentials of  celestial
> >navigation "
>
> Frank wrote:
>
> It's feasible but first you have to define:  what is the 'minimal' narrative
> of celestial navigation? Latitude and longitude by Noon Sun can be taught in
> one long afternoon. That's 'minimal' and you can sail around the world using
> it (if you're feeling reckless and choose to leave your GPS at home). But
> most navigators who learned the art of celestial navigation in the late 20th
> century would be repelled by this choice of 'minimal' cel nav because they
> learned, what I call, "apex celestial navigation"--the extremely stable set
> of celestial navigation tools and ideas that appeared c.1958 and lasted
> through the obsolescence of the system four decades later.  This "apex
> celestial" takes maybe 8 or 10 long afternoons to learn, and it's naturally
> much more involved. Do you need that? Does the student sitting next to you
> need that? And the one sitting next to him??
>
> My Reply:
>
> For Courtney, I am raising my hand to help with this.  Don't know what I can
> do but here is a list of techniques I feel should be in the manual:
> Dead Reckoning
> Latitude by Noon Sun
> Longitude using a shortwave radio and the noon sun
> Sextant operation and how to determine the elevation above the horizon of
> the sun, moon, star, and planet
> Sight reduction using H.O. 249 - method I am presently learning
> Sight reduction doing all the math (the "apex of celestial navigation"
> according to Frank)
>
> Feel free to add to it as any and all feel necessary.
>
> For Frank, I don't think we are attempting to come up with the definitive
> text on Celestial Navigation.  What I envision this being is a simple and
> accurate manual explaining what to do where numbers come from etc., and
> maybe not so much emphasis on the theory as to why things work, just that
> they do work. Again, I will echo Courtney's comments and operate on the
> assumption that we are adults and know something about safety.
>
>
> Frank wrote:
>
> Generally speaking, there are a thousand different students with a thousand
> different skill-sets and  educational backgrounds to bring to bear, and each
> of those has different goals,  too. For each of them, there is a unique,
> ideal 'minimal narrative'. Maybe we need an expert system that builds a
> textbook based on each student's answers to a dozen questions (I'm serious
> --that's a real possibility). In the absence of the perfect text for every
> student, there are numerous books that do an excellent job of reaching some
> large fraction of celestial navigation student 'population'. Three I can
> think of:
> Howell's "Practical Celestial  Navigation"
> Whitney and Wright's "Learn to Navigate" (by the tutorial system  developed
> at Harvard)
> Mixter's "Primer of Navigation"
> But that's just  three out of dozens and dozens of options...
>
> My reply:
>
> Yes there are a thousand different students with a thousand different skill
> sets, but let's see if we can come up with something simple and easy to use
> that is at least a start to wet the whistle of the interested novice and
> challenge the expert to help us all.  As to your suggestion of answers to a
> dozen different questions, yes I think that is a wonderful idea and should
> be put together by those of you who are experts, I am not.  The list of
> three texts you have suggested, I will look into to help me with my own
> problems, who knows maybe one of those will be a "Holy Grail" and suddenly I
> will see the light and all will become clear.
>
> As I said Courtney I am raising my hand to help with this and will attempt
> to come up with an outline for some of the problems I am having.  As I get
> things written I will post them somewhere (not that far yet) and let all of
> you "shred" I mean edit the document.
>
>
> Andrew

   

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