The International Cessna^® 170 Association

That was a pretty perceptive Ohioan It sure is different from many parts of TX Not many large fields around, but beautiful country.

Miles, refresh my memory, where were you working at the time Were you working at Huntsville or at Arnold

bagarre wrote:The Naval Academy stopped requiring cadets to master the sextant around 1998 in leu of the more accurate GPS system.

That is scary!

We're really way off topic but I'd think it'd be scary if they still required Sextants.
Let's look at exactly how much of the WORLD relies on GPS. Not just the military but the whole world.
It's pretty staggering. It's everywhere. Why? Because it's rock solid and has enormous redundancy built in.
So if GPS was ever truly shut down, the whole world would come to a grinding halt.


Compass === useless.

I agree that a compass is not a primary navigation tool anymore but it annoys me to have an instrument in my plane that is not working as it should.
I still fail to believe that every navy ship does not have a sextant in a box somewhere and someone who can use it. My high school buddy who was in the British navy (in his 50s now) is stunningly accurate with a sextant. I have however been wrong before.

170C wrote:...Miles, refresh my memory, where were you working at the time Were you working at Huntsville or at Arnold

I was at Arnold.

Best you come back

daedaluscan wrote:I agree that a compass is not a primary navigation tool anymore but it annoys me to have an instrument in my plane that is not working as it should.
I still fail to believe that every navy ship does not have a sextant in a box somewhere and someone who can use it. My high school buddy who was in the British navy (in his 50s now) is stunningly accurate with a sextant. I have however been wrong before.

Even if they did had one onboard and an old salt that knew how to use it, what use would it be?
They could know their position plus or minus 5 miles.
They can't fire missiles <- GPS Guided
They can't launch aircraft <- GPS Guided
Drones? nope

That technology has gone the way of the stadimeter, log line, 16 inch guns and so should the compass as a required instrument.

I have an old navigator friend from the Air Force that reports that accurrate use of a sextant requires an accurate time signal. The Naval academy was having such a hard time teaching the midshipmen to tell time that they just gave up on the whole system.

blueldr wrote:I have an old navigator friend from the Air Force that reports that accurrate use of a sextant requires an accurate time signal. The Naval academy was having such a hard time teaching the midshipmen to tell time that they just gave up on the whole system.

Give a sailor a ball bearing and he'll either break it, paint it, lose it or get it pregnant.

bagarre wrote:

daedaluscan wrote:I agree that a compass is not a primary navigation tool anymore but it annoys me to have an instrument in my plane that is not working as it should.
I still fail to believe that every navy ship does not have a sextant in a box somewhere and someone who can use it. My high school buddy who was in the British navy (in his 50s now) is stunningly accurate with a sextant. I have however been wrong before.

Even if they did had one onboard and an old salt that knew how to use it, what use would it be?
They could know their position plus or minus 5 miles.
They can't fire missiles <- GPS Guided
They can't launch aircraft <- GPS Guided
Drones? nope

That technology has gone the way of the stadimeter, log line, 16 inch guns and so should the compass as a required instrument.

Here is an extract on from that august source of information Wikipedia Dictionary:

"The US Naval Academy announced that it was discontinuing its course on celestial navigation, considered to be one of its most demanding course, from the formal curriculum in the spring of 1998 stating that a sextant is accurate to a three-mile (5 km) radius, while a satellite-linked computer can pinpoint a ship within 60 feet (18 m) as long as the satellites are functioning correctly. Presently, midshipmen continue to learn to use the sextant, but instead of performing a tedious 22-step mathematical calculation to plot a ship's course, midshipmen feed the raw data into a computer." (I colored the font red because things happen pretty slowly when using celestial nav.)

I wonder if sextants would be any more accurate if they were strapless?

johneeb wrote:... (I colored the font red because things happen pretty slowly when using celestial nav.)

That wiki page is citing and article from 1998.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/29/us/c- ... 69919.html

A lot has changed in 16 years.

http://www.oceannavigator.com/November- ... celestial/

The Article wrote:Not so at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md., where epiphanies like this one are things of the past. With satellites capable of pinpointing a vessel’s position to within a few yards, conventional wisdom at Annapolis has consigned the sextant to a dust bin of maritime relics as quaint as the knotted log-line.

I guess I'll be getting a strapless windscreen soon.

I left T82 (that's Fredricksburg for bluEldr) yesterday .....(I had dropped TIC170A Member and my house-guest Bob Edmondson off to recover his airplane after the Xmas party at Richard/Ina's) and as I headed home (course about 064 degrees.... I noticed my whiskey-compass that I've been bragging on was indicating 130 degrees !!!

... then I remembered to turn off my dual-taxi lights as I left the pattern and the compass swung back to agree, and indicated 065.

gahorn wrote:I left T82 (that's Fredricksburg for bluEldr) yesterday .....(I had dropped TIC170A Member and my house-guest Bob Edmondson off to recover his airplane after the Xmas party at Richard/Ina's) and as I headed home (course about 064 degrees.... I noticed my whiskey-compass that I've been bragging on was indicating 130 degrees !!!

... then I remembered to turn off my dual-taxi lights as I left the pattern and the compass swung back to agree, and indicated 065.

Was it dark - as I understand it the compass will only help if you cant see where you are going, hence the correct heading when you turned the lights off.

You miss my point...or I miss yours.
My point was that my compass is heavily influenced by land/taxi lights when they are on.... and thought others might wish to be reminded of that phenomenom.

(And a compass is relevant/useful regardless of time of day, IMO.)

It bothers me that so many "modern" pilots do not possess the stick/rudder/navigational skills of past generations because of automation dependency.