If anyone is looking for another good read.....anything dealing with life of Earnest Shackleton is a good read.
couldn't they just look it up on their garmin or their cell phone ??
Its pretty amazing when you think about the people who headed out to sea in hand made boats before:
Radar
GPS ( or Loran )
Charts ( all those rocks that are just below the surface....)
Weather predictions
VHF
EPIRB
PFD ( I guess they wouldn't help...since there's no one to rescue you )
I don't like to boat at night in a new area.....and these explorers would go to places no one had ever been before...with out any idea of the rocks or reefs, currents, etc....not knowing if there was a hurricane or tropical storm bearing down on them..... These people had just the right mix of courage, insanity, and naivety to just go for it. Wow.
If anyone is looking for another good read.....anything dealing with life of Earnest Shackleton is a good read.
The weather forecasts in Antartica were the reports we had sent the day before.
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I hope you realize that quite a few here on this forum sailed or flew in the far corners of this planet with just a compass, clock and chart.
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you know you're alone when this happens!
The difference between those of us who learned without all the gee-whiz electronics and those who've always had it shows when the automation stops working.
I went to an annual christmas party at my old flight check office today and got to catch up with the old gang. I learned of the shift in airspace use in southern ca to extensive automated gps nav from enroute to the gate including new runway encroachment protections from other on-airport radar systems.
One flight check pilot told the story of an extensive gps jamming session that wreaked havoc in the airspace for 20 minutes or so while he was departing santa monica in southern ca. Pilots were whining on the frequency about being assigned low altitude airway and high altitude jet route routing using ground-based transmitters only. Very few of the airborne air carrier or corporate/civilian crews were prepared to revert to ground-based nav systems and did not carry paper charts to be able to quickly identify the navaid frequencies. Each pilot had an ipad but it took a while for them to be able to change gears.
Tom had his radios set up for the local navaids (he was always a stickler for that...) and with his local knowledge and familiarity of the atc system he quickly and painlessly altered his plan with atc and continued on away from the mayhem.
When the **** hits the fan, if you don't have familiarity with an area, what are you going to do?
I think there's a lesson there for boaters and pilots everywhere. Lucky for us, things don't happen on a trawler as fast as they do in a learjet 60.
pta pt p ....
.... the difficulty earlier voyagers had with longitude. I get it now.
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Yes, excellent! Got it from the library.There is a marvelous two-episode English TV program of the same name, though the story is told in a different manner than Sobel's book. Stars Jeremy Irons and Stephen Fry, among others.
For me, the best part was watching Mr. Harrison's clock #1 in motion.
Amazon has it used for $19; money well spent. (I've already got mine )
Of course! Non-radar position reports over compulsory fixes. Haven't thought of them for a long time.
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I hope you realize that quite a few here on this forum sailed or flew in the far corners of this planet with just a compass, clock and chart.
The Shackleton voyage rivaled Blighs but didnt get decent recognition for a long time.