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    Re: US Navy and celestial...
    From: Alexandre Eremenko
    Date: 2017 Sep 15, 02:01 +0000

    If CelNav is still practiced in the US Navy, the ships must be equipped with sextants.
    I wonder which brand do they use?
    
    I expect the Navy to use one single  brand. It must be either Astra or import, correct?
    
    Alex.
    ________________________________________
    From: NavList@fer3.com [NavList@fer3.com] on behalf of Lu Abel [NoReply_LuAbel@fer3.com]
    Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2017 8:38 PM
    To: eremenko@math.purdue.edu
    Subject: [NavList] Re: US Navy and celestial...
    
    Despite all the recent publicity about the US Naval Academy "resuming" 
    teaching celestial navigation, in the US Navy the officers don't "do" work, 
    they simply supervise enlisted personnel who do the actual work.   So it is 
    enlisted personnel holding the specialty of Quartermaster that actually do 
    all the work of navigating, whether keeping a DR plot, taking visual 
    bearings, or taking and reducing celestial sights.
    
    That said, I have a friend who served as a US Navy officer.   He said his 
    quartermasters did take occasional sights, as required by their orders to 
    "keep up" their celestial skills.  And how good were the sights?   "Wildly 
    off."
    
    To your main question, I'll leave it to others with more current experience to 
    say how sights are reduced these days.   There are computer based sight 
    reduction programs - such as Stan Klein's Celestial Tools - that are quite 
    comprehensive and quite good.   Enter body name, Hs, he, IE, WT and watch 
    error, press the "reduce" button and you instantly get a and Zn....
    
    
    ________________________________
    From: Alexandre Eremenko 
    To: luabel{at}ymail.com
    Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2017 4:30 PM
    Subject: [NavList] US Navy and celestial...
    
    
    This is frequently mentioned here:
    
    > In times when global navigation satellite systems may
    > be unavailable, due to natural interference, artificial interference, or a
    > failure or receivers, The Nautical Almanac remains an independent, primary
    > backup for determining the navigator's position at sea"
    
    Almanac remains. But the answers to these questions are unclear to me:
    How many USNavy officers are sufficiently trained to use CelNav?
    Do all Navy ships really carry sextants and almanacs? (I doubt it).
    
    Alex.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

       
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