NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Calculators for Navigation
From: Dan Hogan
Date: 1999 Mar 14, 14:49 EST
From: Dan Hogan
Date: 1999 Mar 14, 14:49 EST
Monte: Being a small sailboat navigator I usually opt for what will be quick and simple. Right now I use HP32SII's. But the idea is to find a method and system that you are comfortable with and use it until it is second nature for you. When I started I used 211(Ageton), but I was prone to mistakes with it. I tried 249, easy, but the pages tended to come apart on my wet boat. 229 were just too large to carry in a boat under 35 feet no nav desk and they didn't fit ANY shelves. Then I switched to Weems LOP Book. I used that until Hewitt Schlereth published Sight Reduction Tables for Small Boat Navigation (a shortened 229 table), which I used until I started using calculators. When I was using Weems I could reduce a fix in 5 minutes, 229 was faster, the calculators about the same, but they lead you through the steps. I still use the Nautical Almanac, a log book and home made plotting sheets, I round off Lat & Lo to the nearest degree. I find for a small yacht going 5-7 knots you don't need, and can't use, accuracy to 16 decimal places. But on a Coast Guard ship it's a whole different ball game! I calculate using the columnar method, this gives me room for three sights on a page with comments on one 8.5" x11" page opposite my plotting sheet. I have a note book of the last navigator on the SS United States, only a navigator could recognize that he was reducing sights with 211 using the Ageton format, one reduction per page. > Does anyone still calcualte thier sites - star and sun via normal math w/ > out the programmagle ones. I use the Starpath forms to do all my > reductions. It is completely by hand.........but, I know what is going on. > Is it better to use the programmables instead? > > LTJG Monte Mechler, CEC, USN Dan Hogan dhhogan@XXX.XXX =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= =-= TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send this message to majordomo@XXX.XXX: =-= =-= navigation =-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=
