Navy Resumes Celestial Navigation Course

Posted by $ nickursis 7 years, 11 months ago to Technology
72 comments | Share | Flag

Remeber the issue with the US Navy boats and the Iranians? This was why they couldn't figure out where to go, and the Navy is just caging the reason as "increased threats" They had stopped teaching a basic nautical skill, and found out "gee we really do need to be able to sail without technology when the bad guys screw us". Proof old skills are not always well replaced by new gizmos.
SOURCE URL: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/u-s-navy-resumes-celestial-navigation-training-04042016/


Add Comment

FORMATTING HELP

All Comments Hide marked as read Mark all as read

  • Posted by dukem 7 years, 11 months ago
    This reminds me of my midshipman cruise back in the stone age of the early sixties, in which we all had to perform a star shot with the ship's sextant around two a.m. (darkest part of the night), then calculate our position and compare it with the actual one to pass the test.
    I was so proud that my three shots with the sextant were well-clustered, and were tight, and verified that we were off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.
    The problem was that we were on a cruise in the Caribbean. But at least my shots were tight!
    I gained much humility that night.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by davidmcnab 7 years, 11 months ago
      what happened? Was the chronometer out? Was local time zone not factored in?
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by dukem 7 years, 11 months ago
        The sextants shots went okay, but I had an "attitude" problem with the book we were using, and didn't use the right hemisphere. Duh. Maybe that's why I never made admiral.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
        • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 7 years, 11 months ago
          Especially since they are both in the same hemsphere. I got caught on the same rule contrary and anti-contrary.

          At sea though yiou need Polaris. The Southern Celestial point and Orions's Belt. the rest is done with your fingers or a home made sextant. for latitude. The leading star of the belt is always over the equator. Latitude is a function of distance Longitude a function of time. for that you need two watches. One set to Greenwich and one to local apparent noon. the difference in time translates to the distance from GMT. .
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 7 years, 11 months ago
    Back before I retired in 2010 the merchant marine and the navy had already returned to keeping a full set of paper charts and while the navy tried to drop use of sextants and traditional navigation the merchant ships never did. True we had technobabes who relied solely on GPS And Radar but invariably technical glitches zapped them. Any decent old time deck hand could look at the ocean surface and wnds and sun or at night even better the stars and deduce their position on the planet. Latitude is duck soup easy only needing a patch of clear sky and the fingers of one hand. Longitude needs two watches one set to Greenwich and one to local apparent noon. That's the extent of technology that is truly needed...IF you have some decent charts and not the kind that fall down go boom when the electricity runs out.

    These days? You are hard pressed to find a deck hand that can make decent splice.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 11 months ago
      GPS is a powerful tool but it can fail or be spoofed. Navigation by sextant, chronometer, and navigation charts always works. Self contained systems are more reliable than those that depend on an external infrastructure because that can be targeted by those who wish us ill.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
      Yes, indeed true. We used to use paper charts, SINS fixes, and NavSat for ours (Submarine). It also shows how a lack of understanding of basic skills for just the general task (going to sea) leads to a reliance on a weak link. Goes back to 1941 and the reliance they put on Radar in Hawaii and it's total failure to detect the Japanese, and to interpret data they had (they thought it was a flight of B17s, even though 50-60 planes is a lot more than the 12 they were expecting). Those who refuse to learn from history...
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 11 months ago
    Yep, celestial navigation is one of many valuable things that have been thrown out with the babies bath water.
    It's about time that someone finally engaged their mind!
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by Esceptico 7 years, 11 months ago
    I do not believe two boats got lost and off course into Iranian waters. The evidence against that is too great. But, I do say making a big deal about celestial nav is a great way to “keep the con” — as they said in “The Sting.”
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by WyoJim1963 7 years, 11 months ago
    In a training exercise we went through at Ft. Carson in 1966, it was maps and a compass. My platoon navigated the route at night. Thought we had the other platoon nailed, then found out they had been watching us via IR scopes. Great lesson though.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago
    In general aviation, we keep old planes flying. I learned to fly in the 1990s. As I got out of it GPS was becoming more common with more new planes entering the market, and with portable GPSes being affordable. New planes have moving maps on the instrument panel. They are a great convenience for an experienced pilot, but when they fail on a new pilot, the results can be hair-raising, at the very least.

    I never bothered. I kept it basic. Even my wristwatch was a wind-up analog. "Never let the plane take you any place your mind has not gone five minutes earlier." When speaking about documentation to software developers, I put up a slide of Sporty's Pilot Shop. They sell 153 tools for flight planning. If programmers were killed by their bugs, they would be more careful.

    I do not know how the Federal army trains, but in the Texas State Guard, you have to pass land navigation without GPS. In addition to basic training, we have challenges that earn awards. Again, GPS is not allowed. One of those is called the "Spur Walk" for instance, because you "earn your spurs." Of course, it is not that anyone actually rides horses, but, come to think of it…
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 11 months ago
      I got my pilots license in the 50's. One of the tests was to navigate a cross country using only charts the compass and a stopwatch. The radio direction finder and other navigation aids were turned off. If you are going to fly an airplane you need to know how to do it even when all the electronics fails.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago
        It has been a while, but as I recall, when I prepared for the cross-countries, you had to know the beacons, but were not to use them. It was "good to know" information about instruments, but the test was Visual Flight Rules entirely.

        On the note, the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in 2013 occurred during VFR descent. Their pilots are trained from day one for instruments at academies. Private aviation is not big in China. So, they never learned to fly a plane, except on the instruments. When I worked at Carl Zeiss another sales engineer was working on his private pilot's certificate, also. Overhearing us talk, one of the Germans said that it is easier to get a pilot's license in America than a driver's license in Germany.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by ProfChuck 7 years, 11 months ago
          I flew for a while for NASA, mostly the F104. As supersonic aircraft go it was more like a Cessna than a 747. It actually had mechanical connections from the controls to the control surfaces! Sure it had some electronics but you could fly it without them, it was just more difficult. I learned to fly in an Aeronca 7EC tail dragger. Talk about a minimum aircraft. No electrical system to speak of, you even had to pull the prop through by hand to start it. You really had to fly the thing. Somehow, I think learning in that kind of machine is what kept me alive as I progressed to more advanced aircraft. When the pilot has to do all the work you get pretty good at it.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago
            The Gimli Glider, of course.

            I took a couple of lessons in 1984-1985 but did not get serious until 1993, when I wanted to write a newspaper article about our local airport. Pilots avoid reporters like they avoid doctors. So, I started taking lessons to get to know people. Once I got charts, no matter where I drove or worked, I found a small airport and met their instructors. I probably had 20 instructors, old, young, airline pilots laid off ... Grass strips, Burke Lakefront in Cleveland, lots of county airports, and one close enough to KSC that we could see the shuttle landing strip when we were at altitude. In addition to a slew of Cessnas, I also had lessons in a Boeing biplane, a Schleicher sailplane, some kind of ultralight, and a Piper Tomahawk. I soloed in a Cessna, of course. I had 100 hours, 50 solo when 9/11 happened. The Dot Com Meltdown, and all that, work got hard to find and flying is an expensive hobby, so I never completed the private.
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
      Yep, having to actually fend for yourself is something that adds to a persons character, confidence as well as knowledge. It also adds in things that are ancillary to the topic, such as astronomy and math. You can use a GPS without a clue as to how it works, but you cannot use a sextant without a clue.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by sfdi1947 7 years, 11 months ago
    Yea, unh huh, and when the satellites and electronics fail, yea, that's what you'll use.
    Something they always stressed in the bad old cold war days.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
    Maybe the Navy and our poorly educated prez should all pick up a copy of Alfred Thayer Mayhan's book on the importance of sea power. They still read it in China, and it was good enough for JFK, somehow they think in this administration that sea power and all the skilsl that go with it, are insigniificant.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago
      I will not vote that down because I understand the motivation, but the question betrays a lack of knowledge in several areas.

      (1) While a president with first hand knowledge of the Navy -- such as FDR, JFK, Nixon, Johnson, and Carter -- can advocate for much, everything starts in the House of Representatives.

      (2) Presidents have advisors for a reason. Eisenhower was Army, of course, and Reagan was a civilian. Do you claim that the Navy suffered during their administrations?

      (3) If you read the website of the Naval Institute http://www.usni.org, you will find an interesting avenue for unofficial opinions and recommendations, observations, and evaluations, mostly critical - supportive, but critical in the best sense. It is why military academies and schools train leaders by studying defeats as well as victories.

      (4) The mission of the Navy is growing evermore complex. Indeed, it never got more simple, from sailing to steam, ironclads to submarines. The first battles that aircraft carriers fought were against admirals who refused to admit that the battleship had been surpassed as the flagship of the fleet. Now, the Navy has to consider riverine and riparian operations. DARPA claims to be ready to launch a continuously operating robot ship. http://www.darpa.mil/program/anti-sub...

      (5) China in the China Sea (go figure…) or Iran in the Persian Gulf, sea power will not go away soon; and may never evaporate no matter how far from Earth our "navies" boldly go. But ultimately, the battle goes to whoever controls the high ground. Saddam Hussein had the fifth largest army in the world, but the zeroeth largest satellite reconnaissance.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
        Being a civilian does nit mean a president should not read in areas over which he plans to advocate. Obama has been foe of the military, has dismantled all he could, and has a personal lack of knowledge, as well as poor choices in his closest advisors. If he listened to the military, and engaged with Congress, we would not be in the mess we are in.
        As to the every growing technology in the Navy, remember, should we be hit with electromagnetic disaster, those men better be trained in basics or they will find themselves lost at sea. It all comes down to the man and his brain, working with the basics when the going gets tough. My dad and uncle were Navy men, and they learned that lesson well. They also learned the importance of the presence of sea power, something our prez seems to conveniently ignore if he has been advised of it.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 11 months ago
          It is easy in this forum to complain about President Obama. I cited several presidents with Navy experience. Can you tell me that the US Navy shone because of the special insights of President Nixon or President Johnson? How did President Franklin Roosevelt's seven years as Assistant Secretary of the Navy work out for the fleet when he became President? Was George H.W. Bush better for the Navy than President Clinton?

          We agree that learning celestial navigation is an important skill.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
            I do not distinguish between Republican and Democrat past presidents for the most part, as most were not as openly hostile to the military as is Obama, That is just who he is. He either does not understand them, or he just is completely against the military. How the nation's defense is handled and funded may rely on Congress, but few if any have been so against it as Obama. Pelosi was disrespectful of the military, and Hillary has often spoken quite rudely to them. In comparison to the talks which JFK and RFK held with the military advisors during the Cuban crisis. Maybe it is the recent influx of presidents who did not serve in the military which is the problem. Maybe it is the anti-war candidates who resent the military and think we should become one with socialists countries, not resist. I just know, the military is decimated, we are no longer able or willing to defend ourselves or aid our allies. My brother retired from the USAF because it was becoming so political and PC. He knows military strategy, and felt it was being undermined. As to Johnson, he did not know what he was doing. As to the others you mention, were they students of history, did they read as JFK did and understand? HW iis a one worlder, he wants "1000 points of light", just as FDR was all into domestic programs which cost and continue to cost us billions. How many treated vets as throw aways? How many think of the military as our way to stay a free country, or do they think they just want to control us citizens, and not worry about those who threaten us, because they do not see socialist dictators or Islamic terrorists as threats, but as means to an end? How many presidents have taken Soros into the oval office, even though he openly has declared his desire to take down the US? Every president who has failed to maintain the military has driven another nail into the coffin of this country, and they all ought to be held accountable for it.
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
            • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
              As the country has gotten weaker philosophically, it has less to protect and the people elect pablum presidents. The president used to be the commander in chief of the military. How the hell would Hillary or sanders ever lead a military? Trump may not survive the establishment media onslaught , but he may well be the last chance we have to reverse our course and let America be great. He has my vote
              Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
              • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
                Hilary has made a mess of everything she has touched. Sanders at least is honest he is a socialist.
                Cruz scares me because his wife has become involved, meeting with lawyers in N.Y. She is pals with the world bank folks and was for the North American Union. Either Cruz is lying about his stand, or he is not strongly against her stand. Trump at least knows business and is outspoken. He has some catch up to do in some areas, but look what we have now, a guy who only knows Marxism! He says he is a Constitutional lawyer, except he lost his law license, and did not know how many states in the US when he was first elected! Whoever gets in will answer to the CFR, who vetoed Reagan's plans to kill the Dept. of Ed. , who had control of both one world Bushes, and have their fingers in everything. I shudder to think what an brokered convention would bring, but it would be a one worlder. They have got their last donation from us!
                Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
                  I watched CNN's "road to the white house". I came away from watching 3 episodes with a distinct dislike of our election process. First of all, its run by power brokers primarily. We are just the pawns that get the results of the paid for manipulations of the media. Sanders is right about it being crooked and run by the donations of big time contributors. The candidates only say what their handlers tell them will get them elected. THEN, once elected, they do what the contributors say (why else would they give 200 million to get a person elected to a $400k job !!!!). They all want benefits bestowed on them by the government at OUR expense.

                  No wonder people are angry. Trump has it right, at least he is anti establishment and will at least try to break up some of the entrenched nonsense. I think he has pretty good business judgment, and once sitting down to make decisions he will calmly concentrate on what will work. He has my vote. The more the establishment trashes him, the more I want him (plain and simple). He has freed us from political correctness (at least me). I say whats on my mind now.
                  Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                  • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
                    It is all about brokering power and money. How did Obama get enough to buy a million dollar retirement home, based on his salary? Hillary tries to talk of being poor, yet she has multiple estates. Voting is a sham, we vote, they decide who bought the election. It has come to the point where both Dems and Republicans want one world socialism, no matter what they say, as they want the control over people so they can have power and money. Obama wants to take legal action against global warming non-believers, as with Hitler, the environment is a way to control people. You have to research every candidate, as your freedom will depend on who has any control. All we can do is raise a stink until it is not hidden.
                    Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                    • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
                      What I like about Trump is that he isnt politically correct. He just tells it like he sees it, which makes the establishment VERY nervous. Thats why there is the STOP TRUMP mania. It makes no sense to me otherwise.
                      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                      • Posted by $ Stormi 7 years, 11 months ago
                        Trump is the only one who speaks like a real person. i have this sick feeling that the establishment Republicans are afraid of his truth. I also fear they would rather lose and put Hillary in, as she will further their agenda of one world socialism. The establishment are not on our side. No more donations to Republicans!
                        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                        • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
                          I agree. I watched the cnn town hall with trump and family. It was great in spite of Anderson cooper being an establishment hack. Watch it if replayed. You will like it
                          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
            • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
              Money. They all do what they are told, which is why we have no real executive branch. I look on it more as the CEO answers to the shareholders, and WE are not in that list.
              Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
            One of the issues that has been ongoing for 50 years or so is not just the Presidential aspect (although having 2 sons in the Army and being retired Navy, I can say he has been one of the poorer presidents in regards to military support, and not just financial), it is an endemic rot within the whole command structure: Drugs and cheating in the nuclear missile groups of the air force, such that they fired several top officers, 350 million on a littoral support ship that the crew easily broke, that is still sitting in dock overseas as they try to figure out how to fix it. Just 2 examples, and there are boodles more. It comes from a command structure full of "college grads" who have no real military experience. A lack of upward mobility for enlisted to officer, and a preoccupation with what looks good but may not work well. In 1978 I was on adiesel submarine that had one of the few runaway diesel engines, with fire, to ever happpen in the Pacific fleet. We put the fire out, went back into port, and our engine men over a 6 week period, rebuilt it to new. The 350 million dollar Littoral ship is in a similar situation, and they have no idea what to do with it. It is a slightly more complex issue involving a gear assembly to allow diesels to hitch to main shafts, but anything that expensive and modular should have been desinged with a capability to swap units out as well. You cant have modular mission design without modular engineering to allow for quick repair and back in service. Instead, they have a huge, expensive buoy. I think Mike and Stormi both have valid points, it is a complex issue with a lot of causes and issues.
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
            • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
              I liked the movie "K-19", showing some rather stupid moves on the part of the Russians in an attempt to upstage the US in submarine and missile technology. At least as portrayed, they send in an untrained nuclear officer with pretty bad results...
              Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
              • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
                Yes, however, make no doubt about it. K-19 was a true story.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_...
                We knew all about it, down to the probable causes of the incident. Their Gen1 nukes were badly designed, rushed into service, and they had no real training programs in place. The normal system was for conscripts to replace the crew 50% at a time, you trained your replacement, so the knowledge base decreased over time. K19 was such a horrid design, that they had a lot shorter span The untrained officer had been trained by his predecessor, so overall he did pretty good for what he knew.
                Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
                  I wonder if the sailor who jumped off the k-19 refusing to be "cooked" got rescued by the American ship? I wasn't very impressed by that whole "doing their duty" thing, especially for a bankrupt system like russia
                  Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by terrycan 7 years, 11 months ago
    Had no idea celestial navigation had been dropped as a requirement for a US Navy Officer.
    Had a conversation with a retired Navy man in the 90s. He explained that in a time of war the enemy would make GPS satellites a target. A functioning Navy would require a back up.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Snezzy 7 years, 11 months ago
    Haven't looked at them in a while, but I have my dad's sextant, my great-great-uncle's artificial horizon and his slide rule, and my very own 1963 edition of Bowditch, plus my father's 1874 edition he bought in a bookstore while tied up in San Francisco. His first-edition of the same book (Blunt's Practical Navigator, but actually by Bowditch) was tossed out by an ex-relative "because it was old". Those were going for $10,000 30 years ago. Blood boils every time I think of it.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by Temlakos 7 years, 11 months ago
    Actor James Doohan famously uttered this line: "The more they complicate the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." His character offers that in the context of a bit of sabotage he accomplished before defecting to his old commanding officer, now turned renegade.

    And that's as true in real life as the author of that screenplay suggested it might be in a fictive universe.

    In fact, spurious GPS figures prominently in a plot by a modern-day William Randolph Hearst to start a major superpower war just to generate headlines. To defeat him, two secret agents, one from each side, must reason together and figure out what's really going on--and how their true enemy is playing their respective superior officers for fools.

    And no one has denied, or can deny, that GPS is inherently vulnerable to such spoofing. But you can't fool the guy with a good pair of eyes, a sextant, and the skill to use them.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
      Indeed...
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by Temlakos 7 years, 11 months ago
        Hey! Can you imagine Ragnar steering his ship via GPS? That is: if AS took place in the present period, do you really think he would use that system? Quite apart from the taxpayers' money angle, would you expect him to risk his ship and crew on anything other than his own skill and that of the officers he recruited?
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
          Uh, no. BUt then, he also had a vested interest in staying undetected, which with satellite technology may be an issue, unless he went submerged. Which is probably the route a modern day Ragnar would use.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by Temlakos 7 years, 11 months ago
            Taking a cue from Captain Nemo, eh? Would he then set up a base on an uncharted island and there keep the aircraft he used to fly the annual gold shipment in? I always had the impression his ship was aircraft carrier and battleship rolled into one. Rand didn't exactly explain everything clearly. (Though come to think of it, the People's State of Portugal might not have been able to hold the Azores. The facilities on those island might have fallen into disrepair--leaving the island wide-open for a modern-day privateer to occupy them, develop them, and fortify them.)
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
    Every few weeks the Internet has an outage at my business and home (cox). Who knows what is the cause. They almost never say.

    They used to say that "if it floats it can sink". I think that applies to modern electronic systems too- especially with hackers on the loose.

    If programming were perfect and they weren't constantly trying to accommodate new features, there wouldn't be constant patches revisions.

    The point I am suggesting is that it's important for all of us to have backups if our fancy modern day systems fail- especially when the modern day systems are so controlled by collectivistd
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
      That is the big issue that I am confident we are not prepared for. One good attack on the grid, and it will be weeks or months to get it back. We did it to them, isn't it logical to think they will return the favor? But at their own time...
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by dbhalling 7 years, 11 months ago
    I don't think that would have saved the US boat in Iran. The accuracy of celestial navigation is about plus or minus one nautical mile and you cannot get continuous readouts.

    I certainly think the skill should be taught as a backup, but it will not solve this problem you cite and it cannot those new gizmos.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 7 years, 11 months ago
      The entire system is controlled by the US Military. They can geographically limit or degrade or encode the signal or just blank it out. Especially in a war zone. Which is as it should be.

      Emergency Navigation by Jim Burch of Starpath Navigation in Seattle WA which should be titled Traditional navigation contains everything a sailor would need. The rest are just add ons and if you can't navigate in the wood or mountains without GPS nor drive a car without GPS you have no business hiking nor driving. Stupid is as stupid does and if your life is that worth less then die.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
        There have been deaths related to people following GPS, one in Oregon where a dude from a major tech website used his GPS to get stuck up a dead end logging road and dies trying to get help in winter. Proof positive,.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by $ 7 years, 11 months ago
      Dale, according to what I read, they got lost at night when they lost their GPS signal. Several other sources indicated it was an intentional jamming attack, in the same way that they downed drone they later revealed. Basic night navigation skill should have sufficed. The only issue is the confusion over whether they were disabled as well. If an EMP beam was used, they well may have had no power at all, but that was never made clear. As is usual with our current government, the facts have never been made clear, as far as I am aware.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
        Just made me think that I depend on gps signals and the Internet when I travel by car. We used to have printed maps to rely on, and maybe I should re-acquire them for the places I might need to visit in the case of Internet/gps failure.
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Posted by $ Snezzy 7 years, 11 months ago
          I do not own and do not use GPS. I take my ponies to birthday parties, and the thought of having to back up with my horse trailer for half a mile after going down a road that was somehow "wrong" keeps me tied to printed maps and directions. I discuss the directions carefully with my clients ahead of time.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by term2 7 years, 11 months ago
            I got led down a road which ended in a river wash one time, courtesy of gps ! When I backtracked I saw a number of other cars headed towards the wash and I could see their Gps screens obviously leading them down the path. I had to laugh and wondered about the mess that would happen if the Iranians disrupted the gps satellites
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  

FORMATTING HELP

  • Comment hidden. Undo