{"id":3554,"date":"2015-06-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8105\/?p=3554"},"modified":"2021-12-04T19:27:06","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T19:27:06","slug":"them-stars-you-can-steer-a-ship-by-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/?p=3554","title":{"rendered":"Them stars – you can steer a ship by the stars!"},"content":{"rendered":"
Just learnt that some aircraft up to the early 70s used to have a periscopic sextant so that the navigator (they used to have a full-time person in charge of that in the cockpit) could determine their position on long oceanic routes, where there were no land based navaids. How old-school is that?The port for the sextant even existed in the 747-400 (1998), though it was repurposed as a “smoke evacuation hole”.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Some Flight Sim aircraft, such as the upcoming DH4 Comet for X-Plane from DH-Aircraft features one\u00a0http:\/\/goo.gl\/XA3idq<\/a>.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

This reminds me of the scene from the Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special 1985, where Delboy, Rodney and Uncle Albert were lost in the North Sea:<\/p>\n

Albert: When I was in the Navy I was a boiler maintenance man.
\nRodney: So you’ve never actually studied navigation at all?
\nAlbert: Boiler maintenance men didn’t have to! You see the boiler, has a tendency to go, wherever the ship’s going …
\n…
\nRodney: Stars! The Stars!
\nDel: Stars. You don’t need to read your horoscope Rodney to realise you’re in dead lumber.
\nRodney: Them stars – you can steer a ship by the stars.
\nDel: That’s right an’ all – I remember seeing it once in the Onedin Line.
\nAlbert: That’s a bloody good idea Rodney, yeah.
\nAlbert: There’s millions of them ain’t there?
\nRodney: I love him, I just bloody love him.
\nDel: Isn’t there anything up there that rings a bell?
\nAlbert: I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be looking for – they’ve all got names ain’t they? Like The Bear, things like that.
\nDel: Can’t you just find The Bear?
\nAlbert: Well what does he look like?
\nDel: Well it looks like a bloody rabbit don’t it? I mean what do you think a bear looks like?
\nAlbert: Well where would I find it?
\nDel: Standing up there on top of the glacier mint – you’re giving me the hump you are Albert, you’re giving me the right hump.<\/p>\n

\n

LINK:
\n
\nB707 Without INS – How Did They Navigate? \u0097 Tech Ops Forum | Airliners.net<\/a><\/p>\n

This post was originally published<\/a> publicly on Google+<\/a> at 2015-06-05 18:17:35+0800<\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just learnt that some aircraft up to the early 70s used to have a periscopic sextant so that the navigator (they used to have a full-time person in charge of that in the cockpit)...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6419,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3554\/revisions\/6419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shahada.abubakar.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}