Mac Loc: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia now Hernando Co. Fl.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

good idea I think, also hard, I read a couple of books trying to learn it, never got close, of course I never took an actual class so some one to explain things might have helped, Bob.

Jackel Loc: California

I am pleased to hear this. I am concerned about this willy-nilly urge to adopt digital means for everything. I am particularly concerned about vehicles, including passenger-carrying aircraft. They are so vulnerable to hacking, which leaves them virtually uncontrollable. There is little to no mechanical backup, such as strong wires to control the wing flaps, the rudder and ailerons if the on-board computer is hacked.

Years ago when I owned a 40' sailboat, and sailed the waters off the West Coast of America, I graduated from a U.S. Coast Guard navigation school, having learned about on-board depth sounders, ship-to-shore radios, the red-right-return regarding harbor sea buoys. I even purchased a Plath sextant on a vacation trip to Hamburg, Germany, but the sea voyages I had planned never came to fruition, so I sold the sextant some years later.

Continued reliance on old, true methods of navigation and mechanical operation of moving|flying vehicles is a MUST for safety purposes!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Good for them. Just think if sunspots or something took out the GPS system.
The academies also used to teach slide rules in case the calculators and computers all went down.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

If it's electronic it will fail, Murphy's Law describes when, VBG, Bob.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Army version of Murphy's law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong sooner or later and probably both times

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Yep, so true. It happened to me, GPS blew out (No signal indicated but proved to be malfunction of equipment). Prudence and experience taught me to always carry a map and a Sigma compass. The mountains are not forgiving if you don't have a backup way finding system.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Yes, I've heard about this. Satellites are great, but, as China demonstrated, they are very easy to destroy.

peterg Loc: Santa Rosa, CA

Good idea. I've spent many hours navigating a Navy P3 aircraft via celestial nav. Used an aircraft periscope sextant. Routinely fixes were within 20 seconds of flight time. You need an accurate timepiece. Some different adjustments from surface celestial nav (e.g. Coriolis effect).

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

True!

Quite a few years back, before small privately owned boats had GPS and had to make do with Loran-C, my wife and I were returning from down east Maine to Newburyport, MA at the end of our two week vacation cruise. When we left Sebasco Harbor it was a lovely day on Casco Bay. Almost as soon as we got outside the shoals and rocks outside the New Meadows River, the entire area fogged up. Not being able to see more than 50' beyond the bow, there was no question of trying to get back into the New Meadows, but did have the Portland Sea Buoy Lat-Lon in the loran so I set a compass course for it. About 2 1/2 hours later we heard the buoy but never saw it; about this time the Loran became questionable so I laid another course for inside Boon Island. Eight hours later the top of Boon Island Light became visible so we knew exactly where we were and the rest of the trip wasn't so stressful. During that eight hours we saw one other boat going the other way and one seagull.

It was the longest eight hours, I've ever spent seeing nothing! The next weekend I tried the Loran again and it wouldn't even start up. It lasted just long enough! :thumbup:

The Fat Engineer Loc: Scotland

You can also turn a sexton on it's side and use it for setting out (stake out). I have used one this way to lay out a line of buoys to mark spots for drilling close to the shore when my total station packed in.