NavList:

It will be interesting to see how many newcomers find their way to NavList after reading Greg's article in "Ocean Navigator". And Greg, I hope you'll keep track of the number of people who contact you independently after seeing the article in ON. It's always fun to see one's name in print, but the fact of the matter is that ON is a specialty magazine. They're happy to publish anything that is on-topic in any way. There's minimal fact-checking, nothing like peer review, and readers don't "study" its content. While Greg's article gets the initial word out, the methodology will remain a curiosity, primarily confined to the amusement of NavList members, unless some way can be found to publish it and publicize it more widely.

First, consider who uses manual sight reduction. It's not a large group. For star sights, nearly anyone with enough understanding of the subject will use Pub.249 vol. 1. The sight reduction is already done. It's just a matter of looking up the results in the appropriate line by LHA and Latitude. No calculators, no logarithms, no haversines, and no long-hand multiplications required.`There's no need for sight reduction or even a Nautical Almanac if you own Pub.249 vol. 1, and you're content with morning and evening star sights. Many who learn Pub.249 vol. 1 also learn to use vol.2/3 for Sun, Moon, and planet sights. These users could easily be turned. There's relatively little that ties these two halves of Pub.249 together, and although I do teach and recommend vol.1, I no longer recommend vol.2/3 at all.

Many users will happily use a calculator in place of pub.249 vol 2/3, but others prefer pen and paper. That's one market that can be targeted, and this is a place where the article in ON may have an indirect impact. Tim McQueeney, editor of "Ocean Navigator," also teaches specialty classes to the navigators who choose the celestial option (a racing handicap category) in the Marion-Bermuda Races. This year's race is only a few days away, but in two year's time you may be able to convince him to teach hav-Doniol instead of 249 vol.2/3. That could make a big impact.

Next, consider who publishes manual sight reduction tables which are under-utilized. I'm thinking here of HMNAO. The Nautical Almanac itself has included manual sight reduction tables for three decades (along with calculator instructions) but those manual tables are mostly hated by people who have compared them to other methods, and I have never yet met anyone who has used the tables in the Nautical Almanac except as a one-off experiment. Those tables are ripe for ditching or replacement. Although their practical value to navigation may be very low, they have an important value to HMNAO itself, namely proving the office's relevance and continuing significance in navigation. I'm not kidding. The Nautical Almanac needs to demonstrate that they remain relevant, that they are continuing to improve their product offerings. This institutional value is a window of opportunity for Hanno, and Greg, and you fans of the hav-Doniol methodology. If you write this up carefully and in detail and create the tables and instructions in a format that fits the typesetting standards, page size, etc. of the Nautical Almanac, you could present them with a product ready to publish. And they might be persuaded to do so in place of the current annoying tables and method. How awesome would that be? 

Finally, a little advice: do not breathe a word about alternate methods of long-hand multiplication. This is the kiss-of-death for selling this sight reduction method. Either we know how to multiply manually, and we use the method we were taught as kids, or we don't know how to multiply manually, and we jump straight to calculator methods. Persuading people they need to use manual multiplication is a big enough leap. If you tell them they should learn a new algorithm for performing multiplications, you will lose everyone but the nerdiest geeks.

Frank Reed