NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Byron Franklin
Date: 2010 Feb 7, 09:23 -0800
Sunrise/Set and Longitude.
In the 50ty’s I was aboard the USS Outpost a liberty hull of the WWII. Outpost was a radar picket ship that station monitored for incoming air craft toward the United States. Any missile or craft that was not scheduled was contacted and did not respond was investigated by an armed jet.
Our Navigation was Loran A and the sextant. We laid to on good weather for we maintain our position, or steamed at 66 rpm or 11 kts underway.
Many times large sailboats would come close aboard and “where are we, give me a position or how far are we from land.”
The got me thinking about an easy Sun/rise/set. I did write but never send a solution.
The idea was to have a radio station send a signal for sunrise/set so that a listener could time his and the radio, for an easy Longitude. The original would be innish by a observing the sun upper and lower limb actually this would correct for weather conditions. The radio would get his signal and announce the time. The seaman at sea would time his sunrise/set and the difference in time would be converted to time and arc and applied to the radio known position longitude. The radio station would gain listerns and maybe a sponsor Example Radio known position Longitude, 71 20W the seaman starts his watch as the LL touches his horizon. The radio station gets the actual sunrise signal from the ir souse and announce the time of sunrise at 71 20W the seaman at sea stops his watch reading 6 minutes 40 seconds and converts to time and arc of 1 degree 40 minutes. At sea Longitude is 69 40W.
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