NavList:

   

Reply

Alex


As my texts deal with marine navigation, I had surmised the fly boys with
bubble sextants had come up with interesting ways to use the stars.

> You are welcome to borrow my copy of Lecky.
> He is a big fan of stars (and opponent of the Lunars)
> and he advocates meridional altitudes of stars.
> Not only upper culminations but
> also lower culminations.
> (Of circumpolar stars)
> But he also writes that "soon the LOP navigation
> will be the only method used in practice",
> and was is right.

Still interesting.
>
> The Russian manual of 1966 or so, has a brief discussion
> of "near meridian" Sun altitudes, but nothing else
> except LOP. The only reason why meridian and near meridian
> altitudes survived to 1966 was that the reduction
> is very simple. With the spread of calculators,
> this last reason disappeared.

I was familiar with ex-meridian sun sights with Ho adjusted to maximum via
Bowditch tables.  The star thing sounds like fun.

> In asto navigation manuals for airplanes
> (I read the 2 volume set by Chichester
> he wrote this before his circumnavigation when he
> was working in the MkIX factory during WWII. Purdue
> aerospace library has it. I can check it for you
> if you wish)
> he also spends a lot of time on stars
> (rather than the Sun) emphasizing that you can have
> an immediate fix with two stars.
> And the stars are always visible from an airplane
> at night, and you don't care about the horizon etc.

Thanks.  I'll wait on Chichester until I work through the other
volumes/papers we mentioned on our trip to Strictly Sail.

Bill


--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com
To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

   

Reply