NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2024 Oct 27, 13:23 -0700
Frank Reed you wrote: Any thoughts on the differences between celestial navigation on a modern Boeing or Airbus flight deck in 2024 versus under an astrodome in a Lockheed Connie back in 1954, for example? What works? What doesn't?
Frank
Astrodomes lost popularity as aircraft began to fly faster and higher requiring cabin pressurisation. The drag penalty at the higher speeds and the reduction in the integrity of the fuselage shell under such a pressure difference made them totally impractical. One item which made companies sit up and take notice was the following incident https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22414390 . The solution was the periscopic sextant, which was inserted through a special airlocked mounting hole in the aircraft’s skin no wider than 2” diameter in the case of Smiths or around 1.5” in the case of Kollsman. DaveP
