NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Looking to buy a working Celesticomp V
From: Charlie Smith
Date: 2025 Sep 23, 16:44 +0000
On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 08:06, NavList Community <
NavList@navlist.net> wrote:
From: Charlie Smith
Date: 2025 Sep 23, 16:44 +0000
Paul,
There’s also Starpilot for the TI-89 calculator from Texas Instruments which might fit into your use case constraints. You probably already know about it given its
I recently started making way towards celestial navigation competence from a similar starting point this year. I attended Dr Reed’s intro course and was hooked. I signed up for the first course because of wanting to learn how to use the open source celestial navigation program for the HP 42S (reverse polish) calculator from the late 80s through early 90s, same era as the Celesticomp V.
My HP 42s had been at my side for a few decades and never failed me until two years ago when it imploded from too much exposure aboard small boats. I replaced it with a new and improved version from my calculator heroes at SwissMicros in Switzerland. Their DM42 model is as elegant as my original 42s but with dramatically improved hardware and arguably much improved calculator (emulating the original) - the Free42 open source project driven entirely by Thomas Okken. The calculator runs all my old 42s programs so fast I thought something was wrong at first. The free celestial navigation calculator can be downloaded from https://thomasokken.com/free42/42progs/. Search for “ASTRO_TSO” on the page. The original HP programming manual for this calculator is available for download if you’re interested. I have a very high quality pdf version I’m happy to share. It’s a brilliant manual like many were from that era at HP.
I never would have found this celestial navigation program, the Free42 project, or SwissMicros if my trusty 42s hadn’t died. Most importantly, I never would have discovered Dr Reed or this forum. Life can get better after all.
-Charlie
Re: Looking to buy a working Celesticomp V
From: Paul Mierop
Date: 2025 Sep 23, 06:48 -0700
Dale, thanks for the StarStruck info. Problem is that its a cell phone app. I live ery remote in the mountains where ther is No cell coverage, thus I dont even own a cell phone. Hopefully a Celesticomp V will turn up somewhere
Regards
Paul
