NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2013 May 6, 14:04 -0700
William Hawes, you wrote:
"First off, I was amazed at the number of typos in the document. Proofreading seems to have been left very much on the back burner. Secondly the document is not very readible. It seems like they can't put 3 or 4 sentences together without an article number or subsection number - very often referenced to other places in the book. In fact it is in the overly complicated referencing system where many of the typos occur."
Ah yes, I see what you mean. I noticed that style even in the section you quoted. And thank you very much for the background on the recent editors of the Manual of Navigation. I only have an older edition which apparently was printed in 1966.
You also wrote:
"Finally the 10 Edition is slim compared to older Manuals of Navigation. Alas it is the history and theory that has suffered from this volume downsizing. Perhaps, because the NAVPAC software package has become the primary method of site reduction, they considered that no one was overly interested in historic procedures or theory. I know that won't fit well with NavList members."
I suspect it's even worse than that. Truth be told, I doubt even that NAVPAC software gets much use these days...
You concluded:
"I note that they never even used the traditional word "Amplitude" for this procedure."
I couldn't find it my copies of the Manual of Navigation either so I have to wonder whether there might have been some intentional plan to treat that terminology as archaic, something to be avoided, maybe to prevent confusion with other meanings of the word amplitude.
-FER
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