NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Greg Rudzinski
Date: 2012 Nov 3, 07:00 -0700
Sean,
This same technique is also useful for determining the distance to the far shore of a lake so that dip short corrections can be applied to CN observations.
Greg Rudzinski
[NavList] Re: Thoughts on Celestial.
From: Sean C
Date: 2 Nov 2012 23:44
"If you are on a hight hill an estimation of you height
above your horizon will give some idea to how far your horizon and other objects are." -Byron Franklin
There is another formula for finding distance to objects I have learned for use with a lensatic compass:
1. Take a bearing on an object in the distance.
2. Walk in a path perpendicular to the bearing for a set distance, say 10 meters.
3. Take another bearing on the object.
4. Find the difference in degrees (or mils) between the bearings by subtracting the smaller from the larger one. Subtract the answer from 90° (or 1600 mils) to find the complimentary angle.
5. Calculate the tangent of the complimentary angle.
6. Multiply the distance walked by the tangent. The answer is the distance in meters. (Although any unit of measurement can be used as long as it is consistent throughout.)
This website has some great PDFs dealing with navigation on land and includes a more thorough explanation of the above:
http://www.landnavigation.org/
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