NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

HOME

Re: Flying to Antarctica
From: Brad Morris
Date: 2019 Jan 20, 21:56 -0500

Hi John

From Naval Arctic Operations Handbook 1949

Measuring courses in midlatitudes is fairly simple, but in high latitudes the convergence of the meridians at the geographical pole causes the course to change rapidly. To simplify determining course and direction, the grid system is used. This system substitutes a grid for meridians and parallels of the aeronautical chart and grid direction for geographic direction.

The Handbook goes on to state that the directional gyro is the instrument used to maintain heading. The gyro must be corrected for precession and then mentions using the astro compass to do so. I expect the Navigator may have done the precession correction, but you may remember setting grid direction on the gyro.

I also have a copy of the 1943 Sailing Directions for Antarctica. Black and white imagery is used to illustrate geographical features, which I must say, is quite appropriate. WHITE is what you see, with bits of rock here and there, but mostly just white!

Brad

On Jan 20, 2019 9:33 PM, "John D. Howard" <NoReply_Howard@navlist.net> wrote:

Brad,
Yes, we all got out of the airplane. We knew it was a once in a lifetime experance. Not much to see though. Fron the air everything was WHITE. Not a large place as I rember.
I did not know much about celnav then. Day time and the Nav climbed up on his stool to look through the sextant a few times. What I do rember was we ( the pilots ) were flying grid - the chart we used was special for the polar region and had grid lines instead of lat and long. The Nav had taken over the HSI ( pilot's compass ) and it did not show the same heading that our wiskey compass did. The approach to the runway was in grid heading.
It was early in my flying career and I was luckly to be on the crew. There were three pilots ( and two navs, if I rember corect ) so we could have a 24 hour crew duty day. I had attended Arctic Survival School which was a requirement to go. Most of my polar flying was up north.
John H.

What is NavList?

NavList is a community devoted to the preservation and practice of celestial navigation and other methods of traditional position-finding. We're a group of navigators, navigation enthusiasts and hobbyists, mathematicians and physicists, and historians interested in all aspects of navigation but primarily those techniques which are non-electronic.

To post a message, if you are already signed up as a NavList member, start a new discussion or reply to any posted message and use your posting code (this is a simple low-security password assigned when you join). You may also join by posting. Your first on-topic messsage automatically makes you a member, and a posting code will be assigned and emailed to you for future posts.

Uniquely, the NavList message boards also permit full interaction entirely by email. You can optionally receive individual posts or daily digests by email, and any member can post messages by email (bypassing the web site) by sending to our posting address which is "NavList@NavList.net". This functionality is similar to a traditional Internet mailing list: post by email, read by email, reply by email. Most members will prefer the web interface here for posting and replying to messages.

NavList is more than an online community... more about that another day.

© Copyright notice: please note that the rights to all messages and posts in this discussion group are held by their respective authors. No messages or text or images extracted from messages may be reproduced without the explicit consent of the message author. Email me, Frank Reed, if you have any questions.

Subject:
Author:
Start date:	(yyyymm dd)
End date:	(yyyymm dd)

NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

Compose Your Message

NavList

What is NavList?

Join / Get NavList ID Code

Retrieve a NavList ID Code

Email Settings

Custom Index

Add Images & Files
Name or NavList Code:	Email:

Name:
	(please, no nicknames or handles)
Email:

NavList ID Code: