NavList:

Gary,

Thank you for your very thoughtfull reply.  You have the atvantage in that you sail and fly.

I have played with cel nav since 1991 but as an avaitor.  As I have said many times on this NavList sailors and pilots see the world different.

When I said make a Lambert chart what I was trying to say is that If someone made a small Lambert chart and put it next to a Mercator or a plotting sheet made graphily that no one would see a difference at that small a scale.  They would all be comformal.

You talked about my plane graph paper chart and finding your AP and the longitude of the fix.  I may have been doing things wrong all these years but I take a UPS or graph paper and draw a X in the middle and that is my AP.  The North - South scale is NM ( or tenth of NM ), use a protractor to draw my Azimuth and then draw the LOP so many NM from my AP.  Where the LOPs cross I note how many NM north or south and east or west.  For north-south I just say that NMs are minutes of arc and add that to my AP.  For east-west I multiply by cos(lat) and call the result degrees of arc and add that result to my AP.

Over the years I seem to  get accurate results.  I do not draw any other mederians on the plotting sheet because I never saw what good they would do.  I never thought I was drawing a map ( chart ) and I know I could not use my piece of paper to go anywhere - it only gave me a Lat & Long of my fix.

I have used GPS since the early 1980s but back then they only gave you a lat & long and you needed to plot those onto a map.  That is how I use a plotting sheet - to get a lat & long so I can plot them onto my map.

From what I am reading from list members is that sailors use the plotting chart as a map, not just to get a fix.

Gary, thanks again for your reply but you did shatter a long held myth.  I have flown from Christchurch to McMurdo so for a few hours in a forty year career I used a ( transverse ) Mercator chart.      :-(

John H.