NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: suggestion for a satisfactory celnav narrative
From: Courtney Thomas
Date: 2005 Jun 3, 10:37 -0500
From: Courtney Thomas
Date: 2005 Jun 3, 10:37 -0500
George, Unlike me, Andrew said, "I am raising my hand to help", so, your criticism of..."but by someone else, not by me"... is accurate as applied to me, but not to Andrew. Secondly, I for one would appreciate your contributing your obviously considerable abilities to the the design & construction of the requested celnav narative rather than "nitpicking" [your description, not mine] Andrew's choice of topics :-) If your response is... this is contributing, I won't argue,... but relative to what's needed vis-a-vis what you have to offer, this is indeed disappointing. Please help with the initial overall design and subsequent implementation, in that order. Sincerely, Courtney On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 07:58, George Huxtable wrote: > Andrew Corl wrote- > > >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) > > As a world-weary old cynic, my opinion is that any offer, saying "this is > how I think it should be done, and I'm prepared to contribute" is worth at > least 10 proposals of "this is how I think it should be done, but by > someone else, not by me". So Andrew's suggestions are indeed useful. > > No doubt, he expected a bit of nitpicking about his choice of topics, and I > am happy to provide it. It relates to his suggested topic- > "Longitude using a shortwave radio and the noon sun" > > Although proposals for timing the moment of noon, by observing the Sun > around noon, reappear on this list at regrettably regular intervals, the > fact remains that noon is the worst possible moment for doing that job. > Although it's possible to make a crude assessment of the moment-of-noon by > making an extended set of observations, before noon and after, the only way > to get a PRECISE value of time-by-the-Sun (and hence longitude) is to do so > at a time WELL AWAY from noon, so that the Sun is rising and falling at a > measurable rate. If Andrew were to rephrase his suggestion to read instead- > "Longitude using a shortwave radio and a time-sight of the Sun", > then I, for one, would be happy. > > George. > > ================================================================ > contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at > 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy > Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. > ================================================================