NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Mercator projection in the news
From: Martin Caminos
Date: 2025 Aug 28, 09:01 -0700
From: Martin Caminos
Date: 2025 Aug 28, 09:01 -0700
Hello Frank,
Those comments about the size impression of Africa vs Europe on a map, were most likely made by politicians without any knowledge of navigation at all.
We all know that there is not a perfect projection, so we can pick the best projection depending where we are on the earth and what kind trip we are planning.
- If you are practicing coastal navigation or short passages, Mercator projection works pretty well.
- If you are an airplane pilot planning a short/medium route, you will most like use the Lambert Conical projection on the VFR/IFR maps (at least in the USA).
- If you are planning on crossing the ocean, you might use a gnomic projection to get the great circle route, and then transfer the waypoints to a Mercator chart.
- The reality that most ships or airplanes will never follow the great circle route because of vortex latitude restrictions, restricted airspaces or ETOPS limitations.
- If you are on a icebreaker operating in high latitudes or even doing land explorations in the Antarctic, the polar projection might be the best choice.
We can go on, but my suggestion would be to study the pros and cons of every projection and use the most adequate for our planning proposes.
In my opinion, we should not declare the Mercator projection dead so rapidly.
Thanks !!
