Compass deviation, magnetic variables, etc all lead to inaccurate courses. Confirming their position with a sextant doesn’t work during the day or with cloud cover. If conditions are not favorable for using a sextant they can get serious refraction errors too. Knowing where you are in a 3 dimensional space is not always simple and not accounting for the international date line can throw navigation off. Variation differs and must be plotted accurately others being 2 degrees off over hundreds or thousands of miles can equal a HUGE miss.
Can’t use a sextant during the day? I’ve taken dozens of accurate noon sights. Bowditch is your friend.
Thanks - saved me the trouble. Sextant can be used just fine in the day. Rex
Capt. Philip Weems offered instructional celestial navigation to Amelia, too late, before her journey. After the war, Charles Blair made the first solo trans-polar flight in a P-51 Mustang using Weems navigation tables.
Imagery looks like a swept wing plane. Amelia Earhart's plane was a straight wing. So what is it we're being distracted from?
I think your right, looks more like a jet of some sort than a Lockheed Martin.
I can't believe they'd make a claim like that without putting eyes on it unless they were told to........
Just FYI: It was just Lockheed back then.
"The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin
Compass deviation, magnetic variables, etc all lead to inaccurate courses. Confirming their position with a sextant doesn’t work during the day or with cloud cover. If conditions are not favorable for using a sextant they can get serious refraction errors too. Knowing where you are in a 3 dimensional space is not always simple and not accounting for the international date line can throw navigation off. Variation differs and must be plotted accurately others being 2 degrees off over hundreds or thousands of miles can equal a HUGE miss.
Can’t use a sextant during the day? I’ve taken dozens of accurate noon sights. Bowditch is your friend.
Thanks - saved me the trouble. Sextant can be used just fine in the day. Rex
If you can’t see celestial bodies and you’re in cloud cover without any reference points, ie over open ocean, how do you determine your position?….you don’t. I was pretty unclear in my reply but I was specifically speaking to the Earhart flight.
If you don’t have a single point of reference let alone 3 how effective is a sextant?
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
I did a little reading last night, Earhart would time her departures so that her she'd take off in the afternoon and fly dead reckoning until it got dark. The bulk of the flight would be at night so they could use celestial navigation, take a final fix before daylight and then land an hour after sunrise.
I did a little reading last night, Earhart would time her departures so that her she'd take off in the afternoon and fly dead reckoning until it got dark. The bulk of the flight would be at night so they could use celestial navigation, take a final fix before daylight and then land an hour after sunrise.
I had read similar about their navigational procedures and that’s where I was coming from. I’m NOT competent with sextant navigation or getting a positional fix by sextant so I’m just going by my limited knowledge of sextant use. I know that they, like most things, are reliant on the accuracy of the inputs so unless you are getting a good clear look at celestial bodies or other “fixed” objects….garbage data in=garbage data out which is not a good thing when trying to navigate safely.
Their approach to Howland island was during the day, in overcast or “hazy” conditions which forced them down to 1000’agl. I’m not sure how useful a sextant would be in that case but in my limited experience it would be worthless until the conditions were favorable. Flying DR during the afternoon so they could use the sextant at night and get good positional fixes makes perfect sense to me, but again I’m not knowledgeable enough about sextants to make definitive statements about them. 😀
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
I did a little reading last night, Earhart would time her departures so that her she'd take off in the afternoon and fly dead reckoning until it got dark. The bulk of the flight would be at night so they could use celestial navigation, take a final fix before daylight and then land an hour after sunrise.
I had read similar about their navigational procedures and that’s where I was coming from. I’m NOT competent with sextant navigation or getting a positional fix by sextant so I’m just going by my limited knowledge of sextant use. I know that they, like most things, are reliant on the accuracy of the inputs so unless you are getting a good clear look at celestial bodies or other “fixed” objects….garbage data in=garbage data out which is not a good thing when trying to navigate safely.
Their approach to Howland island was during the day, in overcast or “hazy” conditions which forced them down to 1000’agl. I’m not sure how useful a sextant would be in that case but in my limited experience it would be worthless until the conditions were favorable. Flying DR during the afternoon so they could use the sextant at night and get good positional fixes makes perfect sense to me, but again I’m not knowledgeable enough about sextants to make definitive statements about them. 😀
👌 While I've been in the cockpit of an EC/KC-135 while the navigator and boom operator were working together taking sextant shots I've never been personally walked through the process like I was for radar navigation. I had a rough idea of what they were doing though the math escapes me. 135's have a sextant port where the sextant actually protrudes out of the aircraft into the airstream. Research the SR-71 navigation system for a really interesting use of celestial navigation...
Interesting. In the process of getting my USCG 100 ton Master’s license the sextant proficiency is not taught. If I recall correctly going up to 500 ton or unlimited the sextant training is measured in weeks. A friend of mine who is a retired USCG unlimited rating Skipper and a former Polar Star and Polar Sea captain was telling me that just to be certified to work on the gyro compasses the electronic techs take a minimum 5 week school on just the gyro. 😀
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
Story I heard recently was that there were 2 identical planes with an Amelia lookalike flying the other plane. Not sure why. Remember, this was back when people could keep a secret. People believed in National Security. No social media. No mass media 24 hour news feeds.
Just got confirmation that her plane has been found. It is not in the ocean as many have speculated. It is in a jungle and a plate from an engine belonging to Amelia Earhart has been identified…
Just got confirmation that her plane has been found. It is not in the ocean as many have speculated. It is in a jungle and a plate from an engine belonging to Amelia Earhart has been identified…
Just got confirmation that her plane has been found. It is not in the ocean as many have speculated. It is in a jungle and a plate from an engine belonging to Amelia Earhart has been identified…
News Flash! I just got confirmation that shrapnel got confirmation that her plane has been found. I'll confirm further details as shrap makes them available. Signed, Jimmy Olson.
Just got confirmation that her plane has been found. It is not in the ocean as many have speculated. It is in a jungle and a plate from an engine belonging to Amelia Earhart has been identified…
Just got confirmation that her plane has been found. It is not in the ocean as many have speculated. It is in a jungle and a plate from an engine belonging to Amelia Earhart has been identified…
![[Linked Image from upload.wikimedia.org]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Lockheed_Model_10_Electra.svg/585px-Lockheed_Model_10_Electra.svg.png)
![[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]](https://i.postimg.cc/63b8KsVp/DSCN4329.jpg)
