How to Use Plastic Sextants with Applications to Metal Sextants and a Review of Sextant Piloting

How to Use Plastic Sextants with Applications to Metal Sextants and a Review of Sextant Piloting PDF Author: David Burch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780914025245
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Sextants are used to measure angular heights of celestial bodies above the horizon to find the latitude and longitude of the observer. They can also be used on land with artificial horizons. Sextants can also be used to find the correct Universal Time by measuring the angular distance between the moon and another body along its path across the zodiac. In coastal waters or on land, sextants can be used for very accurate piloting by measuring the horizontal angles between charted landmarks. The vertical angle of a peak above its baseline determines the distance to it, which, combined with a compass bearing, yields a position fix from just one landmark. The angular dip of an object (island or vessel) below the visible horizon can also be used to determine the distance to it. This booklet explains how to get the best results from plastic sextants, and presents numerical comparisons with similar data from metal sextants. Sextant piloting techniques are also reviewed as they are an ideal use of a plastic sextant.

How to Use Plastic Sextants with Applications to Metal Sextants and a Review of Sextant Piloting

How to Use Plastic Sextants with Applications to Metal Sextants and a Review of Sextant Piloting PDF Author: David Burch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780914025245
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Sextants are used to measure angular heights of celestial bodies above the horizon to find the latitude and longitude of the observer. They can also be used on land with artificial horizons. Sextants can also be used to find the correct Universal Time by measuring the angular distance between the moon and another body along its path across the zodiac. In coastal waters or on land, sextants can be used for very accurate piloting by measuring the horizontal angles between charted landmarks. The vertical angle of a peak above its baseline determines the distance to it, which, combined with a compass bearing, yields a position fix from just one landmark. The angular dip of an object (island or vessel) below the visible horizon can also be used to determine the distance to it. This booklet explains how to get the best results from plastic sextants, and presents numerical comparisons with similar data from metal sextants. Sextant piloting techniques are also reviewed as they are an ideal use of a plastic sextant.

The Nautical Sextant

The Nautical Sextant PDF Author: W. J. Morris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780939837892
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The Nautical Sextant reveals in pictures, prose, and perspective the experience and knowledge gained by the author from years of acquiring, studying, and restoring sextants from earlier times and from around the world. This fascinating book owes much of its attraction to the expert description and photos of the mechanics of the sextants and their subassemblies. It is also the story of how different manufacturers, in different times and places, solved the same mechanical problems in different ways in order to perfect one of the most accurate mechanical devices ever produced by man. All of this is complemented by an historical overview to the current day, an overview which has never been published until now. The Nautical Sextant will be of particular value not only to navigators, but also to restorers, collectors, students of technology, curators, and sextant dealers. With its bibliography and extensive use of footnotes, this book will certainly become a classic in its field.

Cognition in the Wild

Cognition in the Wild PDF Author: Edwin Hutchins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262581469
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation—its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory—"in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science—cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm)—to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book

Emergency Navigation

Emergency Navigation PDF Author: David F. Burch
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
ISBN: 9780071565585
Category : Navigation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Emergency Navigation is far more generally applicable than the title indicates. It is, first and foremost, a detailed account of how to find your position anywhere in the world's oceans after your electronics fail and you lose your sextant, watch, and almanac, but that's really only the beginning. The book is chock-full of good sound navigational techniques and principles that will serve you well regardless of where and under what conditions you are sailing. Hopefully you will never be confronted by the need for emergency navigation, but even the most pleasurable sailing afternoon can be enlivened by a knowledge of the skills and methods taught in this book. Each chapter presumes a fundamental understanding of navigational principles, then deepens and expands that understanding to embrace little-known techniques and makeshfit instruments. Beginning with the assumption that preparing for a navigational emergency is good seamanship, Burch presents detailed discussions on finding time and place at sea; determining direction; steering by wind and swells; steering by the stars; steering by the sun; and steering by other objects in the sky. You will also find chapters on steering under conditions of reduced visibility; piloting in currents; dead reckoning; latitude and longitude; and no-instrument coastal piloting. A final summary tells you what to do in any situation with what you have available at the time. David Burch writes lucidly, and the text is well supported by 127 detailed illustrations. This book offers excellent insights into sound seamanship that will serve you well in all your sailing activities. "A standout in the otherwise faceless navigation texts that passthrough our offices. Anyone venturing offshore should read this book thoroughly."--"Yachting Magazine "Opens the way to pleasurable understanding in a definitive work of instant appeal to seamen of all levels of experience. Full insights into nautical astronomy rarely seen in standard works. . . . Full of sound seamanship for coastal and open water mariners alike."--"The Navigation Foundation "Gives one a deeper understanding of the basic principles of navigation . . . a great store of knowledge which may serve you well in an emergency but will also give much pleasure off watch whilst improving your seamanship in the process."--"British Cruising Association Bulletin "Thorough and authoritative. . . . chapters on steering by the stars, sun, and moon stir the imagination and make one want to be a thousand miles from land . . . Gives us a better understanding of the signposts above the horizon than we might gain from a lifetime of random gazing."--"Sea Kayaker Magazine "Far more than an essay on the principles and practice of emergency navigation, it is a particularly well-written account of the principles of navigation in general and as such cannot fail to bring fresh insights to all of us. Every section and paragraph is permeated with sound practical seamanship . . . Apart from its other virtues, this alone makes it worthwhile."--from the foreword by David Lewis (author of "We, the Navigators and "Ice Bird) "Clearly written in a readable fashion . . . the work is so well thought out and covers so many possibilities that both a beginner and the most experienced navigator will find something of value in its pages. Worth every penny of its cost."--"The Burgee Magazine

Celestial Navigation in the GPS Age

Celestial Navigation in the GPS Age PDF Author: John Karl
Publisher: Paradise Cay Publications
ISBN: 9780939837755
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Many books on celestial navigation take shortcuts in explaining concepts; incorrect diagrams and discussion are often used for the sake of moving the student along quickly. This book tells the true story-and the whole story. It conveys celestial navigation concepts clearly and in the shortest possible time.It's tailored for navigation in the GPS age-a time of computers, calculators, and web resources. Although it covers all of the traditional methods of 'working a sight, ' the primary thrust is using the (under $10) scientific calculator. By using equations that you key into your calculator, this book guides you toward a better understanding of the concepts of celestial navigation.You will learn novel ways to plot lines of position, ways to check your sextant accurately by star sights, and how to tell what time it is from a moon sight. The many appendices are a treasure of references and explanations of abstract ideas. Celestial Navigation is a crucial skill for the offshore navigator to know, this book provides the shortest path to that knowledge.

The Barometer Handbook

The Barometer Handbook PDF Author: David Burch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780914025122
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
A modern look at barometers and applications of barometric pressure.

Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation

Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation PDF Author: David Burch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Celestial Navigation by H. O. 249

Celestial Navigation by H. O. 249 PDF Author: John E. Milligan
Publisher: Cornell Maritime Press/Tidewater Publishers
ISBN: 9780870331916
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Any kind of boating can be fun," the author points out, "racing around the marks, or coastwise cruising where there is almost always at hand visual reference ashore from which bearings can be taken for locating one's position and thus finding one's way home. Severing these ties with land, however, offers a new kind of fun, a new kind of freedom, a freedom from dependence on land." Here is a basic beginner's book, introducing the amateur to the tools, the vocabulary, and the techniques of celestial navigation. Among the recommended tools are the H. O. 249 tables, the most widely used among amateur navigators at sea because of their simplicity. The ability to determine one's position at sea both liberates the sailor from the land and enables him to find his way to his destination. If you can read, add and subtract, understand angles, and use a protractor, you can learn to navigate in your armchair or at sea from Celestial Navigation by H. O. 249.

Lost Enlightenment

Lost Enlightenment PDF Author: S. Frederick Starr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Book Description
The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

The Anatomy of the Gyroscope

The Anatomy of the Gyroscope PDF Author: Frank W. Cousins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aeronautics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description