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Here are my thoughts. I can rent a Cessna 172 at Santa Paula airport,
near Ventura California for about a hundred bucks an hour and we will
have to share this cost. It holds four people, one pilot and three
navigators. We fill all the seats and take off and fly out over the
ocean and take sights. You can bring your own bubble sextant and I can
supply a variety of bubble sextants, MA-1, MA-2, A-10A, A-7 and the
navigators can take a number of sights each using different instruments
if they choose. The navigator siting in the right seat can take the
sights while the navigators in the back seats can record data. We will
push the button on the GPS at the mid time of each sight so we can
determine the accuracy of the sights, the navigator with the worst
average buys the beer. Since the plane won't allow the navigators to
change seats in flight we will land at the Oxnard airport, right next to
the beach, to allow the navigators to change seats and a new navigator
to start taking sights. I estimate that it will take each navigator
about a half hour so the plane cost should be about fifty bucks each. It
may be possible to lower this cost somewhat if it is possible to take
sights from the back seats through the back window as this would
eliminate the necessity of landing to change shooters. I will try to get
out to the airport next week and see if it is possible to use a sextant
in back since I have never tried this before. If more than three
navigators are interested in participating we can switch out crews at
the Oxnard airport.

I believe the best dates for this would be January 9-10; February 6-7;
or February 20-21 or possibly later in the year.  We should plan on
flying on a Saturday and keep Sunday as a backup in case of bad weather
on Saturday. The reason I suggest these dates is that the sun and the
moon will both be visible with good cuts for daytime fixes.

If anybody is coming from afar, the Burbank (BUR) airport is the most
convenient. LAX is a bit farther and Long Beach (LGB) is about as
convenient as LAX (it might not look like it on a map but a map doesn't
show the traffic coming from LAX on the 405 over the Sepulveda pass.)
Ontario (ONT) is also doable so shop for the best airfare. Things to do
in the area include Santa Barbara for wine tours, an hour drive up the
coast. San Diego is about a three hour drive down the coast or one can
take a train. You can go aboard the Star of India and the carrier
Midway. Long Beach for the Queen Mary and a Russian submarine. Near Long
Beach in San Pedro is the Lane Victory (a victory ship) and a good
maritime museum. One can also drive five hours and see Yosemite which is
beautiful in winter. A different five hour drive up the coast takes you
to San Francisco or you can take a train or fly.You can visit the
Pampanito submarine (SS-383) and several historic vessels including a
liberty ship, the Jeremiah O'Brien. A four hour drive from here is
Vegas, baby. There are plenty of flights from BUR to Vegas also. A three
hour drive takes you to Palm Springs. A two hour drive takes you to the
ski slopes.

Did I mention that it was 77 degrees here today?


http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=93021


gl


frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com wrote:
>
> Peter Monta, you wrote:
> "Wouldn't a UAV be the logical solution here? I'm not sure units with
> 40000ft capability are all that cheap yet, though. A very small
> payload might suffice for sun sights (small camera). Establishing the
> offset from UAV position to ship would probably come free with the
> overall control scheme to get the thing back, and the 2D offset would
> only be a mile or two anyway. Fixed wing might be best for smallest
> platform jitter when taking the sight."
>
> Nice! That's a very clever solution to the problem of the 40,000 foot
> mast. And if the sensor package is cheap enough (a camera and a radio
> with a ten-mile range?) then you could make them expendable and launch
> on weather balloons. The price of the balloon might turn out to be
> greater than the cel nav package. Whether that's more economical than
> a mini/micro-UAV or not would depend on the cost of the "toy plane"
> and the expected loss rate. In any case, a system like this means no
> sextant and no navigator holding said sextant, so it certainly takes
> the charm out of it, but at least it would still be real celestial
> navigation.
>
> -FER
>
> --
> NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc
> Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com
> To , email NavList+@fer3.com

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