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These programmable calculators are getting squeezed out. I can buy a new TI Voyage 200 programmable calculator for about $130. Or I can buy a new Moto-E Android smartphone for around $40 (I recently bought two for $29.95 each). The smartphone is vastly more powerful than the programmable calculator, of course, and it can run a wide variety of celestial navigation apps as well as open and run spreadsheets designed for navigation. And it's a GPS navigation tool, and it's a star finder, and it's a camera, and it's a supercomputer, and it plays music and movies, and it's a fully-functional Internet browsing device! Oh, and I learned a few days ago that it's an FM radio receiver, too.

I certainly understand that some folks simply get pleasure from working with these old-style programmable calculators. Maybe you should buy a $40 smartphone and spend $10 on a programmable calculator emulator! That's still much less expensive than the TI Voyage 200.

Just a reminder: the nice basic solar-powered Casio fx-260 solar-powered scientific calculator normally sells for about $9, right off the rack at Walmart and Staples and other stores that stock school supplies. As we discussed last year it usually floats, but even if it is sunk in saltwater, it will recover once it's dried out. It's easy to pack one in any sextant case. That's the computational tool that I recommend for celestial navigation --it's required for my "Modern Celestial Navigation" classes.

Frank Reed