NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Zeppelin sextants and altitude corrections
From: Brian Walton
Date: 2025 Nov 3, 02:28 -0800
From: Brian Walton
Date: 2025 Nov 3, 02:28 -0800
Zeppelins had access to Bygrave type calculators, vertically mounted drift sights, and sonic height above water altimeters, in a large chartroom.
The navigators also had very poor upwards and rearwards field of view for CN, often poor horizons, and were in a hydrogen bomb.
Finding wind using double drift plotting is easy, but also necessary at speeds of only a mile per hour.
Even in CAVOK conditions it is sometimes necessary to descend to 200' to get a crisp horizon.
If the Captain allowed turning off course and descending to get wind, and a sight, and weather permitted, the process of getting a PL is straightforward. At 200', Sun errors for semi-diameter, dip and refraction cancel out.
Chichester did all this solo, without an autopilot.
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