February 11, 2011 05:15
Sorry about thread hijack .....
Few Celestial Suggestions:
(1) Self-Contained Celestial Navigation with H.O. 208, ( John S. Letcher, Jr. ) ,out print but see note below.
(2) Emergency Navigation, ( David Burch)
(3) Long Term Almanac, (Dr. Geoffrey Kolbe)
(4) Starpilot app for IOS, by Luis Soltero.
For serious practice...... spring for a aircraft bubble sextant and you can practice in your front yard or on the roof of your apt building. Artificial horizons work, but are a royal pain and dramatically limit the sights you can take. Air sextant won't work in bubble mode on the boat unless it is dead calm but there are a few models that have 'horizon mode and can be used for land/air/marine. (e.g. Navy Mark V, // note: units, parts, service avil from Celestaire)
Look for most any book by 'David Burch' who is the founder of the Starpath navigation school. He is a great writer/navigator/teacher. Particuraly "Emergency Navigation" really is => most of the possible pathfinding techniquies for the prudent mariner. David Burch is a prolific author and his text on navigation and weather are among the best.
The wonderful thing about John Letcher's book is (a) he is a very good writer, (2) included EVERYTHING needed to navigate in that book. The sight reduction method HO 208 requires a little bit of math but is VERY compact. Most others such as HO 214, 229, 249 do most all the calculations and you just look things up in tables BUT there are expensive and very very big on the book shelf of a small boat. If you have a 70' schooner then 'no worries mate'. The only thing that is out of date in the book is a 25 year nautical almanac (1975-2000) that was good until 2000. It can be reconstructed from information in Bowitch. Such an almanac is limited to Sun and stars but is cheap and easy to obtain. Not bad to have it all in one book. As of Feb, 2011 there are 6+ copies on AMAZON for under $20, you need to add, $3.99 media rate shipping, of course. Also, Letcher wrote the incredible book, "Self Steering for Sailing Craft", he was an aeronautical engineer and is the chairman and principal shareholder of AeroHydro, Inc!
https://picasaweb.google.com/georgelewisray
Luis Soltero the founder of www.globalmarinenet.com is an impressive global networking someone you may already be familiar with.
Long term nautical almanac data for the sun and selected stars valid until 2050, plus easy to use, concise sight reduction and altitude correction tables. Plus work forms to make the process even easier. A concise one-book solution for celestial navigation. It takes a few extra steps to get GHA and dec with the Long Term Almanac, since it does it without the usual 10 pounds of reference books, but with practice it takes just a few minutes longer than normal almanac look up. http://www.starpath.com/catalog/books/1882.htm
Few Celestial Suggestions:
(1) Self-Contained Celestial Navigation with H.O. 208, ( John S. Letcher, Jr. ) ,out print but see note below.
(2) Emergency Navigation, ( David Burch)
(3) Long Term Almanac, (Dr. Geoffrey Kolbe)
(4) Starpilot app for IOS, by Luis Soltero.
For serious practice...... spring for a aircraft bubble sextant and you can practice in your front yard or on the roof of your apt building. Artificial horizons work, but are a royal pain and dramatically limit the sights you can take. Air sextant won't work in bubble mode on the boat unless it is dead calm but there are a few models that have 'horizon mode and can be used for land/air/marine. (e.g. Navy Mark V, // note: units, parts, service avil from Celestaire)
Look for most any book by 'David Burch' who is the founder of the Starpath navigation school. He is a great writer/navigator/teacher. Particuraly "Emergency Navigation" really is => most of the possible pathfinding techniquies for the prudent mariner. David Burch is a prolific author and his text on navigation and weather are among the best.
The wonderful thing about John Letcher's book is (a) he is a very good writer, (2) included EVERYTHING needed to navigate in that book. The sight reduction method HO 208 requires a little bit of math but is VERY compact. Most others such as HO 214, 229, 249 do most all the calculations and you just look things up in tables BUT there are expensive and very very big on the book shelf of a small boat. If you have a 70' schooner then 'no worries mate'. The only thing that is out of date in the book is a 25 year nautical almanac (1975-2000) that was good until 2000. It can be reconstructed from information in Bowitch. Such an almanac is limited to Sun and stars but is cheap and easy to obtain. Not bad to have it all in one book. As of Feb, 2011 there are 6+ copies on AMAZON for under $20, you need to add, $3.99 media rate shipping, of course. Also, Letcher wrote the incredible book, "Self Steering for Sailing Craft", he was an aeronautical engineer and is the chairman and principal shareholder of AeroHydro, Inc!
https://picasaweb.google.com/georgelewisray
Luis Soltero the founder of www.globalmarinenet.com is an impressive global networking someone you may already be familiar with.
Long term nautical almanac data for the sun and selected stars valid until 2050, plus easy to use, concise sight reduction and altitude correction tables. Plus work forms to make the process even easier. A concise one-book solution for celestial navigation. It takes a few extra steps to get GHA and dec with the Long Term Almanac, since it does it without the usual 10 pounds of reference books, but with practice it takes just a few minutes longer than normal almanac look up. http://www.starpath.com/catalog/books/1882.htm