NavList:

Steve et al.:

Frank's post reminded me about this and I was thinking about it as I was getting ready for work. I was also thinking about a long-standing wish of mine to have a voyage simulator which would allow one to practice sight reduction and other related activities. Then, I had a bit of a facepalm moment. I thought to myself: "I'm good with Excel. It would be cool if I could make a practice problem generator. ... Wait, why can't I?!"

I immediately began to work out how I could do it. I think I have a quite a few good ideas and I've already started working on it. I was going to try and bash it out and surprise everyone, but I've realized what I'm planning is going to take more than a day to complete. I am going to use my Excel almanac as the back-end though, which should give me a huge head start.

Here's an [optimistic] list of planned features off the top of my head:

• Custom, random or real-world departures and destinations. (The latter via the included ~26,500 city database in my almanac.)
• Custom or random [but believable] set and drift with customisable change interval.
• Customisable heading and speed through the water. (Note: the course and speed made good will vary with the set and drift.)
• Customisable or random [but static] height of eye, index error, etc.
• Output of UTC and "sextant" altitudes of a random or selected set of bodies. Or maybe selectable types of sights, like a noon sight or "time sight", etc.
• A "show 'true' position" button which will allow the user to check their answer if desired.
• Maybe more ...

As I wrote above, this is optimistic and will likely take me quite a while to complete (like maybe months, IDK). Work has been crazy lately. But I really want to get this done, so watch this space. And apologies for not following up on this sooner.

Regards,

Sean C.