NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John D. Howard
Date: 2015 Jun 5, 11:42 -0700
Bob,
I am not Andres but let me chime in. The navigators of old thought in terms of TIME. Even after Sumner and St Hilare the almanacs were done with time as the main product. You and I think of terms of angles - LHA, GHA, Ho, ect but long ago it was time. The navigation day started at noon, the sights were to see how much time untill noon or past noon. Longitude was figured ( and sometimes expresed as ) from time.
The almanacs were produced by astronomers so they gave Right Ascension and Equation of time and local apperent time - all expresed in units of time. Even after people were flying airplanes the almancs did not change much. Weems had a hard time getting an air almanac with GHA and it lasted only one year. I think the needs of air navigators forced the change to angles.
Just my 2 cents.
John H.
