One year ago today: June 23, 2013, first gig, new band.
Five years ago today: June 23, 2009, gee, it rained.
Ten years ago today: June 23, 2004, Spirit lander.
MORNING
This picture is my work desk, with my rack of “ready-access” screwdrivers. Today was so freakin’ hot that all you get is a list of what I studied. However, don’t run away, there is a lot you can learn in a few minutes here, even if all it does is make something else you do a little easier. You’d have to read a lot of material to cover the same ground, so think of today as studying for an exam.
My plan is to use any sleepless time to study so I went back and re-read the pages of operating the sextant. They seem so easy once you know what’s going on. Folks, you can laugh a little next time you see someone reading the farmer’s almanac. Now that I know what happens with those tables, you can smile when you see some “farmer” nod knowingly as he thumbs the pages—because trust me, he’s reading the weather forecast, not determining the right ascension of Altair.
As a spinoff to celestial navigation, I’m learning what all kinds of terms from the almanac actually mean. I know the importance of Aries, whose symbol is the glyph, , and why it is in the Wingding table. You can view the tables by going to start>all programs>accessories>system tools>character map. (Or when you click start, you can type [charmap] in the search box, and hit enter.) Like many, I supposed the original programmers were a superstitious lot, but I see now there may be stronger reasons for the inclusion of zodiac signs. They are used in stellar navigation.
Like Greenwich, the constellation Aries was arbitrarily chosen in the sky as a starting point. I still need more study, as I thought Aries was a constellation, not a single point. But I think it has something to do with a perpendicular drawn through Aries to the ecliptic, which is the line in which all the planets and sun appear to revolve around the Earth. I’m also looking for an opportunity to use the impressive word “perpendicularity”, so keep an eye out for it.
Wait, there’s more. The almanac lists twilight because that is the time of day when the brighter stars are visible at the same time as the horizon. How am I doing? This isn’t in the books, you know, I’m figuring this out as we go along. And I haven’t found an almanac yet to see if I’m remembering things right. I think right ascension has something to do with the multiples of 15° when things happen to the east of Aries. But one thing I can state for certain that no farmer I ever met has a clue about these tables. He’s really looking in the almanac for when to plant the spuds.
NOON
Ah, I may be closer to my goal than thought. Of my three navigation books, all end around chapter seven and the remainder is filled with refinements and special cases. An example is the way to measure the distance to a racing competitor by the known height of his mast. The navigation part is past, now I must put pencil to paper and get cracking with some experience. So, what conclusions are possible at this point?
Primarily, the tables are a collection of figures where the tedious but static math is already done for you. Similar to looking up a sine of an angle, but with more factors already included. The process start to finish seems to fit these four broad categories:
One: take a sextant and time reading. The more accurate you get at this, the better the results and some authors report a “fix” within a tenth of a mile. You cannot get too accurate and some sources recommend an average of &; several readings.
Two: apply two to three known adjustments to the sextant reading to come up with and “observed” angle, “observed” being a very misleading term. (It is the angle you would have observed if there were no atmosphere and you were standing at the center of the Earth with perfect eyesight.)
Three: using the nearest full degree point from your nautical tables to where you think you are, measure bearing and distance. Lots of calculation at this stage, but it is all basic arithmetic, that is, adding and subtracting. No real mathematics involved.
Four: take the above results and transfer them to a small map (150-300 miles in scale) of where you are. The work is done on blank sheets and when complete, the “fix” or position is transferred to a map, which seafarers like to call a “chart”.
What is not shown here is the strong reliance of modern tables to known information. The height of nearby mountains, the position of certain lighthouses, a map of marker buoys. Navigation would indeed be heavy duty for the type of person who tries to “memorize” the process instead of learn it. Step three (above) is challenging because it involves something of a separate art: deduction reckoning, or dead reckoning. These exercises do NOT, repeat NOT, prepare you make a reading if you were stranded on a desert island with no tables, sextant, or clock.
However, with your grade school geometry, if you understand the navigation process, you would be able to make a reasonable estimate which would be far better than nothing.
NIGHT
Here’s another photo to balance the blog. Really, I didn’t go out today except for morning coffee and that was like crossing the Sahara. This is a drill bit that is supposed to make a square hole. I looked through the package and Agt. M says he’s seen them work. But I dunno. See you tomorrow, I’m going up to Flannigan’s after 9:00 for the $2 Bud special, just to get out for a while.
Careful, I didn't say any old clock was hard to find, but what I need is an LCD (not LED) display that shows the date as well as the time, but all I'm finding is old Casio wristwatches that a few jerks are hawking as "collectors items". Right.
Every so often I get a response from somebody who thinks I could make a career out of blogging. I’d like to say that I’ve sincerely looked into every aspect of that as a job and as a business and rejected the work. Even the highly targeted blogs pay less than minimum wage, I mean $150 per month per blog is not that much considering you’d have to post 2 – 3 articles per day. Unless you post schlock, the research time if phenomenal.
Also, sooner or later most of the blogs will push you to recruit new people. Like music, the company makes a lot of money on new but only semi-talented people coming in where the pay is lowest and the burn up their best material to make an impression. All successful bloggers I’ve seen made their money selling the blog idea to others, which is not the same as real authorship.
ADDENDUM
What’s this? It’s a picture of an island you’ve never seen before. I know that because same here. It is in the middle of the Pacific and you are about to read the strange tale from the trailer court of how it got to be in this blog. Forty feet above sea level and 384 acres, mostly sand dunes, it’s about as nothing place as you can find, the exception being New Jersey.
It has made me aware that what I have is one method of navigating, meaning I may not be even close to enlightenment. But like accounting, it is best to understand several procedures and pick the one that gives the most accurate results—which can vary by the person doing the work. I mentioned in the course of other reading I learned to construct a small map of suitable accuracy. By that I mean I could draw such a chart on blank paper and a trained navigator could use it. I’m nearing the stage where these disciplines will have to be combined and I don’t suppose it is going to be all that easy.
I also learned why the navigator takes a mid-morning and mid-afternoon sighting, since these didn’t make sense from a purely mathematical perspective. Ah, the reason is when theory meets practice. These two readings, say from Miami, would produce two plotting lines, one to the southeast and one to the southwest, which meet at close to a 90° “intercept” and that is the most accurate reading you can get.
(I didn’t invent the concept, I never said that, but I did say I figured it out on my own without being told. I mention it because those who never experience that spark are the ones who complain that those who do are “bragging”. Ha, if I get this material, I’ll have bragging rights for a month.)
This took me up to chapter seven of the shortest text I have on the matter. I would like to combine a little fun or entertainment at this stage because there is no substitute for getting out there and taking some actual readings. Timing. The addendums are often written before the daily posts, you’ve caught that already. Since Agt. M moved to this neighborhood, there are fewer club expenses. So I am proposing the club take a car to Lake Okeechobee for the day to collect readings, which will be later examined for accuracy. This excursion is slated to cost $61. Check back.
Ah, you are back already. Well, I found some of the tables on the Internet, which isn’t easy with bastards like Amazon who clutter your screen with expensive books when they know darn well you are searching for the free version. It is best to download the tables and print just the sections you need. (Download but don’t print the Nautical Almanac, it changes every year so just look up what you need.) I was able to get the Nautical Almanac and the Increments & Corrections table, which in turn allowed me to calculate the GP (geographical position) of the sun at the time I looked.
Oops, I better tell you about the time. What you need is the time in Greenwich, England, at the moment you chose to look. The time looks like this: 2014 June 22d 23h 53m 23s. You can get the moment you need from GMT, whose address begins not with www, but wwp. I don’t understand wwp yet.
Lisansiki is smack dab in the middle of the largest marine off-limits area just declared by the feds. You can see both my calculations and an arrow pointing to the “X”. I drew that “X” because that’s how you mark a spot. Anyway, that’s what I always thought. You can find the coordinates of most places using TravelMath. Lisianski is called Papa-apoho (short-short-long-long-long). And I now notice that Wiki gives the coordinates of most places in the upper right hand corner of articles. To the seventh decimal place. See, I’m learning.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
