NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Bygrave and Chichester
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2009 Aug 01, 02:59 +0100
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2009 Aug 01, 02:59 +0100
My interest in the Bygrave was triggered by my reading Sir Francis Chichester's account of flying a Moth, open cockpit single engine airplane across the Tasman Sea in 1931 doing celnav on the way to find two tiny islands where he could refuel, each leg about 500 nautical miles. Today, at Headcorn Aerodrome in England, I had the opportunity to fly the same type of aircraft and my admiration for Chichester increased ten fold. It is a very light aircraft so it is bounced around a lot my even the lightest turbulence. The controls are very sensitive, especially in pitch, so it takes a lot of concentration to keep the plane flying straight and level. It is also very noisy and the wind blows vigorously through the cockpit. I don't know how Chichester managed to do it, flying the plane, shooting sun lines with a marine sextant, doing the computations with the Bygrave (holding it horizontally so it didn't get blown out of the cockpit), estimating drift angle, and plotting the LOPs and the drift lines. I recommend this book, Seaplane Solo, to everybody and I can email a copy to anyone who is interested. gl --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
