NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2025 Nov 4, 08:04 -0800
What did zeppelins carry for navigation equipment and what techniques did they use? Well... when? And in which navigation culture? The era of rigid airships lasted from about 1900 to 1938, and airships were flown under different conditions by a number of countries. The tools were not identical. The analysis methods were not identical. But they all shared one key distinction from winged aircraft: lifting power. And that implied a luxury of options. One sextant and a lightweight Bygrave slide rule in a fixed-wing bomber? Why not five sextants and three complete sets of navigation tables in an airship? A dozen heavy volumes of tables of logarithms also make nice jettisonable ballast in an emergency... :) I can hear the order now... "We are leaking hydrogen! Eject the logarithms!!"
Frank Reed
