NavList:

Well, my copy of RYA Astro Navigation Handbook ordered from Amazon Prime has just arrived less than 24 hours after I ordered it. It turns out to be the November 2024 reprint of the 2009 edition.  The only obvious change to earlier reprints is that the name of the author has changed from Tim to Melanie Bartlett.  The RYA book sales site does talk of a 2026 update of the 2009 Edition, but that might just be because there's now an e-version available.  Unless there’s something in the 2026 update, there’s still nothing but a very general comment (page 41) concerning the use of handheld calculators and apps.  To be frank, if you swapped the marine sextant for a MkIX bubble, there’s little difference from what I was taught at the RAF School of Navigation in 1967, except we had acceleration errors, risings and settings, duration of twilight, etc, etc to deal with at the same time.  One clever point is the book manages to cover entire content without mentioning a specific year apart from the fact that the date 1980 appears on the top of the Polaris table (Page 62).  Nevertheless, the book is a useful little aide memoire for people like me who can never remember whether to add or subtract longitude west for more than 30 minutes.  DaveP