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 I recommend this
> book, Seaplane Solo, to everybody and I can email a copy to anyone who
> is interested.

I would much appreciate a copy, Gary.

I am not starting a new thread because the subject is related to your
commentary on the difficulties of making celestial observations. Could you
give me a reference to anything on the attempts by Byrd and Weems to use the
single-body fix  method by taking sun shots through the open hatch of their
seaplane?

Christian Scheele


----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary LaPook" 
To: 
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 3:59 AM
Subject: [NavList 9281] Bygrave and Chichester


>
> My interest in the Bygrave was triggered by my reading Sir Francis
> Chichester's account of flying a Moth, open cockpit single engine
> airplane across the Tasman Sea in 1931 doing celnav on the way to find
> two tiny islands where he could refuel, each leg about 500 nautical
> miles. Today, at Headcorn Aerodrome in England, I had the opportunity to
> fly the same type of aircraft and my admiration for Chichester increased
> ten fold. It is a very light aircraft so it is bounced around a lot my
> even the lightest turbulence. The controls are very sensitive,
> especially in pitch, so it takes a lot of concentration to keep the
> plane flying straight and level. It is also very noisy and the wind
> blows vigorously through the cockpit. I don't know how Chichester
> managed to do it, flying the plane, shooting sun lines with  a marine
> sextant, doing the computations with the Bygrave (holding it
> horizontally so it didn't get blown out of the cockpit), estimating
> drift angle, and plotting the LOPs and the drift lines. I recommend this
> book, Seaplane Solo, to everybody and I can email a copy to anyone who
> is interested.
>
> gl
>
>
> >


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