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This is a bit of Nav-l history.

Silicon Sea 87 appeared on 10 June 03 (though the subject line read
"Silicon Sea: Leg 78", presumably an accident). "Silicon Sea: Leg 87
Answers" was posted on 16 June.

On 22 August, Peter Fogg posted a message under the heading " SS: Leg 87
questions", outlining his problems in understanding the second part of
SS87; just exactly as members are requested to do. No response was
forthcoming from the list.

On 5 Sept, in a different thread, Peter complained-
"Some weeks ago I posted my go at one
current Silicon Sea exercise and then details of a problem I was having with
the one before, and I have yet to hear a peep from any expert."

On the 6 Sept., Peter restated in detail his problems with SS87, under
"Silicon Sea  No 87 problem".

On that same day I posted a note to back him up, stating-
"And yet up to now there's been no response to his plea, about a problem
which puzzles me too, when I look at its wording. So I wish to add my voice
to his, and ask for a bit of further explanation (or perhaps
reconsideration) about that problem and the way it was posed."

For all that, NOBODY in the Silicon Sea backup team, and nobody else
either, has made the slightest response to those requests for help.

Since then, Mike Burkes has tried SS87 as an exercise, and has come across
the same difficulties. Although the three of us have got together to try to
make sense of it, we have been unable to do so. Is it a failure of
understanding, of all three of us, or is it the way that SS87 has been
posed, which makes it, in part at least, insoluble?

======================

It's clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs, to leave that problem
unresolved. So I ask Nav-L members, and PARTICULARLY THE SS BACKUP TEAM,
the following questions.

Does ANYONE claim to have completed SS87, whether or not they were in
accord with the "official" answers: or even got so far as answering its
second question?

If so, what did they take to be the Greenwich date and time of the Sun
observation referred to in that second question, and the Sun coordinates
that were asked for?

Is anyone out there prepared to have a shot at explaining that second
question to us?

If there's any response, then on request I will be happy to repost the
relevant parts of that question and its answers, as a reminder to anyone
who may have binned it.

George Huxtable.

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contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at
01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
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