NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Automatic deviation calculation by electronic compasses
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 Dec 10, 09:26 -0800
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 Dec 10, 09:26 -0800
George Huxtable wrote: > Does our group deliberately restrict itself to "traditional navigation", > whatever that may be? I would hate to think so. There are (in my view) good > reasons to limit discussion of GPS, as an enormous separate topic on its > own, which has supplanted other navigation and has its own forum. But we > happily deal, sometimes at length, with other applications of modern > technology; and why not, indeed? George, I would hope that this group would discuss ALL aspects of navigation, from ancient techniques to modern ones, from kamals and lunars to self-compensating electronic compasses. I like to learn of new technologies but I am also fascinated by the solutions to problems people developed in earlier times (think steam locomotives vs diesels or sail vs power ships). As I'm sure you've observed, there are however a few troglodytes on the list that seem to think that the use of any post-1800 technology for navigation will certainly fail, causing ship and crew to die a horrible death. When this thread on self-compensating electronic compasses started, I knew very little about them except that some of them had the drive-in-a-circle technology for self-generating an internal deviation table and automatically applying it to their displays. I've learned a lot about the technology since this thread started a few weeks ago. While equipping my own boat would be very far down on any list of desired "toys," it's good to know about the technology. Lu Lu -- NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList+@fer3.com