NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Nautical Almanac
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2002 Jun 24, 13:20 +0100
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2002 Jun 24, 13:20 +0100
>Herbert Prinz wrote: ---clipped---- ...You are luckier than some English sailors. While you can still use the >correction tables of last year's almanac, some of this year's TSO copies are >lacking daily pages for May and June...I thought I mention this as food for thought for those amongst us who use celestial as backup for GPS. Sometimes it works the other way round!.... -------------------------------- Hello Mr. Prinz, You have brought up a very good point re: the missing pages of the almanac. How ironic that in this case, the astro-navigator would have to resort to GPS as the backup! There is another electronic back up which is quite reliable and sturdy: the "Celesticomp" navigation calculator. I bought one from Celestaire several years ago and have never regretted the purchase. Although I still diligently practice reducing sights the old way (and that includes the use of trig and log tables), the Celesticomp is really useful for those times when you are taking dozens of sights for practice, and want quick answers. Astro-navigation's answer to instant gratification. On a related issue, which may be of interest to the list, it is a little known fact that when Roald Amundsen embarked on his historic journey to the South Pole in 1911-1912, he attended to every little detail (in characteristic Amundsen fashion), except for one thing: he forgot to bring along the 1912 edition of the Nautical Almanac (ref. Roland Huntford: Amundsen and Scott). Because of this, he was compelled to reach the South Pole (and fix his position there with absolute certainty) before the close of 1911. As it turns out, he did, on December 17. Talk about cutting it close eh? regards, Robert ------------------- Email sent using AnyEmail (http://netbula.com/anyemail/) Netbula LLC is not responsible for the content of this email