East is Least. West is Best.

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Fox3WheresMyBanana
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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#61 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:51 pm

A watch with known error is important. I had my old cheap casio digital as backup, but spent a couple of months beforehand assessing the error, which seemed to vary with temperature. It gained 1 second per day at tropical temperatures.
For a book, I recommend Mary Blewitt; it's what I used and taught from.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/celestial ... 1408132128

For my Atlantic crossing, I had 2 gps receivers but took no sextant, relying on EP. I kept a plot running for interest and was only about 22 miles out at the end, almost all along track, which with my planned landfall would have been perfectly adequate and safe had the GPS gone out. I had calibrated the log and compass against the GPS before leaving European waters. My weather was almost all light winds, so very little steering deviations needed. The Simrad TP22 autopilot did 95% of the steering with admirable accuracy and very low current draw; I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I would bung the handheld GPS in the oven (Faraday cage) when there was a lightning risk. A crew I met at both ends were struck by lightning mid-Atlantic, and they had also bunged a GPS and VHF radio in the oven, which after the strike were the only electrics not fried, so it works!

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#62 Post by boing » Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:07 pm

Many, many, years ago Casio sold a calculator that manipulated hours/mins/seconds calculations in real time format rather than decimal. It was very popular in the crewroom at the end of the month at log-book completion time. (I think the RAF subsequently changed to decimal fractions of an hour for flight time).

May have been quite useful for nav. purposes since a lot of the old tables were probably hours/min/secs.

Or as the old joke went, Shackletons don't use a watch for navigation they use a calender.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#63 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:52 pm

Talking of tables, almanacs etc. there is some useful free material here...

https://www.nauticalalmanac.it/en/navig ... manac.html
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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#64 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Sep 03, 2019 4:26 pm

Conversely the UK Air Almanac, last time I saw it, had removed all the way to nav data and was devoted to illumination: risings and settings, twilight, and some esoteric data related to night vision goggles.

Astro navigation for fast jets was limited to rising in the east, setting in the West and tracking towards the equator. Remember due South at noon and 15 deg/hour away from that.

For really modern jets on loss of nav kit, radios and electrics, eject before the aircraft lands.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#65 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Sep 03, 2019 5:05 pm

boing wrote:
Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:07 pm
Many, many, years ago Casio sold a calculator that manipulated hours/mins/seconds calculations in real time format rather than decimal.
See the nautical almanac site link noted above for some retro Casio navigation programs.
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You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#66 Post by ExSp33db1rd » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:52 am

Sorry for the deviations.
Or do you mean variations ? ( sorry, couldn’t resist ! )

I still have a Casio pocket calculator, which adds hours and minutes.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#67 Post by Slasher » Wed Sep 04, 2019 8:02 am

If any bugger mentions Grivation or Polar bloody Stereographic I'll gouge their balls out with my wife's chopper. Failed my first sitting of ATPL Nav because of the damn things. Total related marks 40%. Pass mark was 75% IIRC.

Any talk of Meridianal Parts gets said balls equally gauged out but with a rusty spoon.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#68 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:32 am

A case of mentioning of 'Meridianal Parts' resulting in body parts... ;)))

Lest my mentioning 'Meridianal Parts' (oops I just did it again) has put my own parts in danger, I post a soothing image for you Mr (or should that be Captain) Slasher!

I assume you meant meridional parts! ;)))

The joys of astral navigation.

The joys of astral navigation.JPG
The joys of astral navigation.JPG (51.77 KiB) Viewed 311 times
o:-)
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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#69 Post by ExSp33db1rd » Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:47 am

Grivation or Polar bloody Stereographic
Exams ? Never had to sit any exams, just learned about the things on my first LHR-ANC flight.

Leaving ANC homebound, I think the Grivation was around 90 deg E ( or W ? ) obviously I knew at the time but have now forgotten, but if one applied it the wrong way one would have ended up somewhere near St. Petersburg (or was it still Leningrad in those days ? )instead of the UK, so when operating as Nav. I used to gather all the variable options that had to be applied, work out my own Grid Heading, then give the same mathematical puzzle to the F/O and if he came up with the same result, give or take a couple of degrees, then we would agree to fly that heading and instruct the skipper accordingly. Must have worked, I'm still around !

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#70 Post by Pontius Navigator » Wed Sep 04, 2019 10:04 am

For some arcane reason, probably hoping to sell the jet to the Japanese, a Nimrod was tasked to fly to Japan which they did in a polar route. Grid at the time was a technique only taught to staff navigators of which there were none. At the time the Nimrod only had a pair of bog standard GM compasses, I can't remember the flavour, and an inertial platform. This single IN was usually slaved to the GM compasses and was ideal for maintaining heading accuracy during manoeuvres. It was the same IN as in the Blue Steel missile and could generally be relied upon as a free running IN for 10 minutes. Fine for a missile, bit of a problem over 9 hours.

Suffice to say, they managed there and back.

Slasher

Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#71 Post by Slasher » Wed Sep 04, 2019 10:34 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:32 am
A case of mentioning of 'Meridianal Parts' resulting in body parts... ;)))

I assume you meant meridional parts! ;)))

Nope - I was right the first time. :p

I was a captain mate. Gave it up last October to stay sane. Am now a junior SFI (i.e. gone from being king of the shits to sh!t of the kings).

Now where's that rusty spoon...?

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#72 Post by John Hill » Wed Sep 04, 2019 7:56 pm

We managed to cross the blue Pacific, reaching most of the way, with only tables, plastic sextant and Seiko watch. We also had a HF receiver. Fly speck islands and low lying atolls appeared over the bow as expected (mostly).
Been in data comm since we formed the bits individually with a Morse key.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#73 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Wed Sep 04, 2019 9:55 pm

Quite an adventure, John! Could you give a bit more detail on plastic sextant accuracy, please?

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#74 Post by John Hill » Wed Sep 04, 2019 11:25 pm

F3WMB, the plastic sextant was not a toy and was intended for serious use. I can not recall if it was a Davis but it was certainly very similar to the lower end Davis models. We were careful to never put it down except in its storage locker and of course kept it out of the sun. It was plenty accurate enough for our purpose and landfalls were 3 miles or so. We relied on sun sights mostly and only tried star sights as an exercise.

Heading east was mostly a broad reach and we had a wind vane to self steer, the longest period was 12 days without adjusting the QMS vane.


Puka Puka has a reef extending miles off one direction and we were able to avoid that!
Been in data comm since we formed the bits individually with a Morse key.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#75 Post by ExSp33db1rd » Thu Sep 05, 2019 1:31 am

Accurate time for Astro ? We always checked our watch each flight with HF time signals, WWV from Fort Collins Colorado or WWVH from Hawaii.

I've been told ( Fake News ? ) and mentioned before, that when the early scientists were choosing the Prime Meridian ( Zero ) the French refused to accept the English dominance that put it through Greenwich, and created GMT and they always maintained Paris MeanTime thereafter, tho of course they had to accept the charts for True North. They maintained this until the present Space Age, which requires all the satellites to maintain the same time, and all countries to maintain the same datum, Co-Ordinated Universal Time, but they won in the end, as this is now known as UTC - Universal Temps Co-ordinaire ! Barstewards.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#76 Post by boing » Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:02 am

America, for a while, had zero longitude through Washington DC.

There may be a good reason for changing Coordinated Universal Time to UTC. When I first saw the popular abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time I did not think anybody in the public regime could have been so stupid as to choose that name.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#77 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:21 am

While looking into the the pros and cons of Davis plastic sextants I have also done a bit of a whistle stop journey through navigational history looking at the various methods and technologies used by our forebears in their navigational endeavours.

It appears that the Vikings might have been equal to the obscured sun issue using a technology from the future, or perhaps magic or myth. Could this have been for real? Long dismissed as legend there is growing evidence that points to the some veracity in this story and that polarization of the sunlight may have been key to this method's utility.

Sunstone.JPG

Icelandic spar

https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime- ... on-at-sea/

Whatever the case, the history of navigation shows the extraordinarily intelligent and diverse use of methodologies and technologies navigators have long used for getting from A to B on this beautiful orb we call the earth over the centuries.

Ultimately it seems that while navigators were certainly endowed with big brains and accurate clocks the Captains may have had all the gold braid, big ties, watches and other nether appendages.
Though you remain
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"To be alive
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To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#78 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Thu Sep 05, 2019 10:16 am

Thanks John.
I did similarly with a Service sextant on a voyage from Gib to the Canaries, and was 2 miles out after a week of also mainly sun-run-sun sights on a reach - although handsteered by squaddies; it was an Army boat. The sea conditions were benign. The plastic sextant seems fine from your experience.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best. mebbe

#79 Post by Rossian » Thu Sep 05, 2019 3:20 pm

.... in 1986 I was asked to hep crew an ex flotilla-sailing yacht from Corfu to Naples.
As we rounded the north of the island still getting to know each other, captain/owner RCS colonel,former Polaris boat commander, RAF aircrew (me) and a 16 yr old lad waiting for A-level results. A mixed bag you might say. It's midnight and gentle beer is being drunk to celebrate NOT being shot by an Albanian patrol boat. The following discussion took place.
RN "what do you have in the way of fixing aids skipper?"
Cap "We have those RN charts you got from the locker at HQ".
RN "Nooo thats not a fixing aid"
Cap "Well, the compass?"
RN "Nooooo that tells us where we're pointing not where we are. And when was it last swung?"
Cap " It's swinging all the time in those -what do you call them? gimbal thingies!"
RN "Rephrase when was it last calibrated?"
Cap "Well it got out here from the Hamble so I assume it works"
RN "When?" um 3and a half years ago.
RN "Cap none of these are fixing aids - anything else??"
Cap "Well swmbo gave me a sextant for christmas a couple of years ago - will that do?"
RN "Splendid, fetch it out we can use that"
Cap " Um it's polystyrene and it needs assembly. It seemed to need some hard sums to build it and I never was any good at maths so it has never been built"
RN "OH!!" In the tone of voice why did I volunteer for this??
RAF " I've got a multi band HF/MF receiver and the flight planning handbook for this area We can use the NDBs at Catania and Lecce and then the beacon at Crotone and although the cocked hat will be a bit big we might manage a 5nm circle."
RN "Tell you what cap you've had a busy day today lots of worry why don't you and the lad get you heads down and RAF and I will do the night watch. No?"
We spent the rest of the night hemstitching and hiding light houses and headlands to calibrate the compass. Matey created a compass correction card from his head. I learned a huge amount that night and in the morning when Cap surfaced he was surprised that we weren't further along. We never did tell him why.
Many years later I met the father of the lad who said he still talked about this trip but mainly how he was fascinated by the different decision processes the three service men demonstrated. The Army wanted it done by the book, the RN were great at extemporising and the RAF wanted a fast anwer. He was a very bright lad.

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Re: East is Least. West is Best.

#80 Post by Pontius Navigator » Thu Sep 05, 2019 4:36 pm

TAM, generally a compass swing relies on the principle that they are reasonably accurate to start with.

I was once swinging the Lancaster, lots of new iron, no idea if the compass has ever been swung, and E-W/2 was coming up with improbably large numbers.

Out of curiosity a younger Eng O came for a look see. I explained my problem and he asked if I had tried a Sperry swing. 😳

It was simple. Drive aircraft to head East; make compass read East. North ditto. West note error. South ditto. Then start E, N, S, W, quick check swing, job done.

Once airborne we then found the TACAN was 40 deg out. As the mod was unofficial and all engineering support, mainly engines and airframe was voluntary we carried the TACAN fault for the season.

One day the Eng O asked if we would like the bomb doors operational. Yes please we said. At an air show this chap noticed all our windows were cracked, crazed or discoloured. He said he made them,would we like a new set. Yes please we said.

We didn't have a 'real' flight engineer but one of the ground crew warrant officer engineers was ex-Lancasters and he volunteered when he could.

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