That tool sailors use to know where they are?

Are you trolling Hanco?

No Brian, just curious.

Wabi, I’m certain you don’t mean sex txt’n, but with your spelling issue.

I’m just checking.

LOL

🦫

Leaving this thread before there are pics.

Of..

Somedays I sits and thinks

Somedays...I just sits.

We could be talking about canned potatoes....

😂🦫

I got a best noodle thread up.

Canned tatters

Plastic tasting chocolates

Now noodles 🍝

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Always wanted to learn, but don't have a unit or the books.

Brave men, that went see back then.

Yeah, Wabi...The field wasn’t even close for The Worst Speller on the Fire.

You won your first Beaver Award.

I will announce it officially on January 2nd 2022.

Congratulations big guy!

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I'd love to have one. Back in the day, moons around Jupiter were used to fix local time. Without time, you don't know where you are. "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time" was a good read.

I kinda figure if anyone knows, it would be KW. I not sure, but I think he was Columbus's navigator.

Yeah, you put it at the end of a row of books to help hold them upright.

What's a book?

Don't remember which of the Polar explorers it was, but they were mushing along and noticed they forgot to wind their timepiece that was an absolute necessity for determining longitude. They backtracked to their prior camp where a position had been established. Wound the watch, took a fix, waited 4 hours, and took another fix. Went through their tables backwards, derived the precise time, and headed out for the south pole. Obviously, some pretty sharp cookies.

Our survey crew just got an octant! This is going to be fun!!

save a lot, sells canned potatoes,, they are very good.. and dont rot in your closet.

Btw, for those interested.
Back in November we got up at 1 a. m. while doing our 1820’s survey gig at San Felipe SHS and did a star shot off polaris to determine the current declination. With our 18th century equipment,next morning when we could shoot the angle, we arrived at a magnetic declination of 2 degrees, 45 minutes east. We did not know the true declination before hand.

When the professional surveyor arrived we informed him of our results. He whips out his trusty iPhone and says well lets see what my app says is the current declination here today, he gasp and asked again whatwe got. We told him. Come to find out the current declination was 2 degrees 48 minutes east!!!!!

Yes. They aren’t difficult to use, but you’ll need a very accurate watch if precision is your goal. And a book that correlates celestial elevation with longitude. It’s easier if the sea state is not mountainous. 😁

I know Wabi will ask,

http://resources.coastalboating.net/Navigation/Celestial/sext-or-oct.html

Randy, they most likely had an astrolabe.

I believe it's called "Astroglide".

No he wasn't...but he and Ingwe did teach the man how to navigate.

Ouch!

Thanks Bob!

It was that damn cabin boy!!!!

See cabin boy mentioned above

I believe that is what Lewis & Clarke used to map the westward trip that they took.

Many of the points that they established have been checked with modern methods and found to be right on or very close.

Airplanes used them too.
Just sayin...

Yes, sex can be gratifying in a tent.

It took him 30 years to get his gizmo right for navigation but when he got it done, the whole civilized world was in his debt.

It then led to tonight's NYC Times Square ball drop.

Yes, I have used a sextant.

Yeah, even have one - a beautiful Weems & Plath. Took a class in the late 80's when I had dreams of taking my sailboat on a circumnavigation but never got any good at it. I found I was much better at reading lat and long's off my Loran's screen & later, the GPS. Got lazy, which is a bad thing when it comes to navigation. Currently have a chartplotter at the helm of my sailboat ... practical but not real elegant.

Yeah, even have one - a beautiful Weems & Plath. Took a class in the late 80's when I had dreams of taking my sailboat on a circumnavigation but never got any good at it. I found I was much better at reading lat and long's off my Loran's screen & later, the GPS. Got lazy, which is a bad thing when it comes to navigation. Currently have a chartplotter at the helm of my sailboat ... practical but not real elegant.

Back in the day, 1989ish when on active duty I “shot cell” (celestial) in the B-52 using a sextant to navigate across the pond before the days of GPS. A radar scope, chart, stopwatch and cell was a blast to get from point A to point B. A third of navigator training at the time was on celestial navigation, times have certainly changed …

Yup...
We did the same on the KC/EC-135s in the seventies.
My EC-135 at Moldyhole was scheduled to go to Tinker for PDM work. On the flight across to CONUS the J-4 compass was off a RCH, same for the sextant. They hit their entry point into Canadian airspace off by sixty miles, Canada wasn't impressed. To add insult to injury it was our instructor navigator onboard. I was with the crew that flew to the U.S. to pick up the airplane and bring it back to Moldyhole, made sure the Nav brought a good sextant with him.

A good friend had about 6 of them, and agreed to teach me.
Shortly after, his house burned down with almost everything in it. On his birthday. Jan 12, IIRC.
Wish I could have learned.

Christmas present without a manual?

All the large aircraft in the usaf had sextants for crossing the pond. If I recall, the SR71 used an astrotracker that could track 38 stars. I think AF1 had an astrotracker as well.

Coasting out over the water with nothing but heading, sextant, and timepiece was fun but serious work. In the 1980’s, a South American C-130 went down in the ocean because they ran out of fuel. It was reported that the pilot shot the navigator as blame for losing the aircraft!

The good thing about a sextant, air almanac, and a set of HO-249’s is that they are independent of computers.

On a few trips I made in support of the European Tanker Task Force we flew into Pease AFB and had a PINS installed and then made the crossing the next day.
If you're interested in the SR-71 and on fakebook there's an open group named "habubrats" that post a lot of information about habu operations...

Sex?, yes...

Tant? no.

I didn't myself, but I was on the deck many times when the Quartermaster would come up at night to take readings... He was good at it too - an old salt that was a QM-1...

I have periodical sextantrums on fool moons...

Just in!!! Photo of our new octant!

You never disappoint Bob!