Reader and veteran Keal Madsen sent this. If you can help him out
with free charts or nav tools, email him at newgfarms [at] gmail.com
I am the son of 8th generation Navy (1953-1975), 13th
generation navy on my mother's side. Grampa Blaizdale a ship's captain,
fought in the war of 1812, "The second revolution."
I myself, served proudly on board the U.S.S. Saratoga CV60 on the
flight deck(1985-1988), during the Cadufie incident in 1985 under Pres.
Reagan. I twice stood a crow's nest watch 15 decks up and fell in
love with the GRAND MISTRESS herself, the sea.
The first time in the nest, I must have been paying my dues.
The waves in the storm through me from port to starboard like a
toy in a dog's mouth. The next time I stood that watch there was
not one cloud in the night sky. As I looked forward and aft, port
and starboard nothing was about not a ship, not a light, nor a
hint of land. the sea was still like a sheet a glass but for a six
naut. wake. That's when I saw what I spent 4 hours in hell for the
week before. They called it "the crystal ball" from horizon to
horizon
three hundred sixty degrees and not just over my head or to the
sides but even under the ship herself, STARS ! Every star seen by
every man before me!
It was just as the boatswain mate had said. As an Air dale I
didn't believe him, and I'm so glad I saw it for myself. It was a
once in a lifetime thing. As was seeing my father's name engraved
in a bar in Spain from 7 years before I was born (the bar part,
wasn't the shocker).
Before my father died he ask me to spread his ashes at sea. I need
to not mention the rest of his request, you might think me rude. I
have started to learn to sail, as I have sailed twice with instructors
and once solo. He spent his last working years sailing a
rich man's Ketch up and down the west coast (his favorite). I have
found pleasure in a few of my father's hobbies; Sailing, Big
bikes, scuba diving, drinking, and dancing. I quit drinking at 27
. I had to stop dancing after I lost the use of my left leg in
bike wreck at 32. I still scuba, and I will live aboard my own
sloop some day soon.
Driving a cab in this small town doesn't bring in the kind of
money one might need to buy the expensive electronic navigation
tools that most people now rely on. I have just bought my first
sextant and telescope. I'm looking for a book that will teach me
celestial navigation. His ashes will bring me to Virginia,
key west (where I started), California, Guam (he danced in a movie
called "south Pacific"), Japan, Vietnam, Australia, the
Mediterranean sea, and finally to Rhode Island where he and mom
met. No one man can only sail during the light of day. Perhaps you
might now of that one book that will be a one time purchase
explaining every thing I will need to know for navigating through
this two year trip (I may hate sea food at the end). Also if there
is any kind of place I might get donated charts and / or
navigation tools (I sure there is something I'll need I don't know
about) for the at sea burial of my father; ADJ Chef petty officer Walter James Madsen the 3rd, a proud Navy Seal and U.S. sailor of 22
years.
Thank you for your time and consideration
Keal A. Madsen
Two readers have a new
website with cool interactive spreadsheets for celestial navigation,
for a very small, reasonable fee.
Reader Bill Arden writes:
Here
is a contribution to your reader page. As a beginner in celestial
navigation, Ive created a rather explicit form for use in recording
my observations and doing the calculations (a physics teacher of mine
once described a text as a road map on a scale of one-to-one
thats what Ive tried for here).
The
first page includes space in which to calculate Hc & azimuth
directly; this has the advantage that the true assumed position can be
used without rounding. The second page, which I added last week as I
began to learn about H.O. 249, is a simple form for using those tables.
These worksheets are HERE
as Word documents. Thanks, Bill!
Cool tips from reader
Greg Rudzinski - thanks!!!
USING GRAPH PAPER TO CONSTRUCT
PLOTTING SHEET
Step #1 Space latitudes such that one square on the
graph paper equals one minute of latitude.
Step #2 Determine square spacing for longitude by
multiplying cosine of latitude by the number of
latitude minutes in the grid.
COMPASS CHECK USING PUB 249 TECHNIQUE
Check the compass by comparing a low altitude
bearing of the sun to an azimuth that is extracted
from Pub. 249 using declination, latitude, and
altitude as entries. Acceptable accuracy can be
obtained by entering with whole degrees of declination,latitude, and altitude (interpolation is
omitted).
USING STARFINDER TO DETERMINE LOCAL HOUR ANGLE OF
ARIES
A starfinder can be used in reverse to
determine
an approximate local hour angle of aries by observing a prominent body such as SIRIUS and entering the
altitude and approximate azimuth using the appropriate
latitude template.
Once the starfinder is set by observation of a
prominent body then an approximate altitude and
azimuth can be obtained for any other body for sextant
pre-setting purposes or for entering a POLARIS table
with the local hour angle of aries.
AVERAGING TECHNIQUE FOR ROUGH
WEATHER CELESTIAL
Step#1 Take four consecutive sights of the same body within
a 6 minute period.
Step#2 Find the mean altitude and time for the 1ST and 4TH
sights then the 2ND and 3RD sights.
Step#3 Find the mean altitude and time for the two results
of step #2.
Step#4 Perform a single sight reduction of the final mean
sight of step#3.
The resulting average will be more accurate
than a single observation with just a few more minutes added to a sight
reduction. Rough weather movementerrors will be averaged out.
PLOTTING SHEET METHOD FOR CELESTIAL NAV. COMPUTERS
When using a sight reduction computer the
assumed position for multiple sights can be any position of choice such
as a GPS position, DR position, or an even whole latitude or longitude.
Graphpaper can then be used with the assumed position centered on the
sheet. The fix from a round of sights can be transfered to another chart
by plotting the range and bearing of the fix from the assumed latitude
and longitude. The need for latitude and longitude scaling is eliminated
on the plotting sheet. This allows any graphpaper notebook to serve as a
celestial sight plotting log book.
AN ALERT READER HAS FOUND THE
LONG LOST TUTORIAL BY AL
PLACETTE. IT IS NINE PAGES PLUS APPENDICES. GREAT DETAIL FOR
TEACHING YOURSELF THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF CEL NAV!!! Scroll down on each
page to the "Go to the next Celestial Navigation page"
icon. THANK YOU AL!
Kind reader Harold Arsem sent me
two pdf files of worksheets for those using HO 249. You
need a free pdf reader to open these, available at www.acrobat.com.
Worksheet1
Worksheet 2
Peter Kempees has sent the following for
my European readers:
The German Amazon -- www.amazon.de
(in German) -- sells the cardboard sextant online. Might be of interest to
European readers, perhaps. So does this French site: http://navastro.fr
(in
French). Navastro also has an English version: http://www.navastro.fr/en/index.html.
And here is the German manufacturer: http://www.astromedia.de/
(in
German).
The English version of the cardboard
sextant kit is available at Celestaire.
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