The cruise back to Curacao ... CC AA event complete.

[salt_air]

You know your a long way from home if ....

You can say you're headed North to get warm.




Let's see if I can take anything away from Dil's great sextant classes and find my way back to Curacao ... where I left my around the world adventure to fly for Miss Nellie.


Dil's headed west on quite a journey and will continue the further education of the sextant students that are following along ... I'm going to take what I've received so far and use it with an ADF to make my tracks North through the middle of South America.



The NDB path North would take me back through the Andes or along the East Coast ... zig-zag either way.

There is however a fairly straight line up the middle that has NDB coverage for the majority of the way, but also has a few "bald spots" in between signals.

That is where I'll use sextant and DR to get through the "no signal" zone ... makes for a little bit straighter path.





Said good bye to Dil in Isla Rey Jorge and made it up to the Falklands at Mount Pleasant (EGYP) :http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforu...-Seeking-Sally&p=620486&viewfull=1#post620486


Made another hop while hurricane Irene was here (real-time) and I'll post now.


Took off from Mount Pleasant last Saturday actually and hit Gobernator Castello at Viedma, Argentina (SAVV).

Straight line DR with sextant shots almost 700 NM at roughly 340 degrees.

A few screen shots and a duenna .... was able to get fixes from 3 LOP's ... the Sun, Moon and Venus until dark (last shots).

Plan was to pick up the 75 NM NDB at the airport ... but it never registered ... and it was dark and no sign of the airport as I crossed the coast.

I'm using GW3 textures and that cuts out taxiways and a lot of the lighting at airports ... (so leave sooner next time).


That gave me a chance to make use of the sextant in another way ... I would just use the LAT/LON for the airport and then let the graph tell me where the airport was relative to my position ... ah ha!


Good idea, but by the time I read the input I was right about over the airport ... good practice at least.

I had to make some heavier than normal corrections on the shots before this .... so that must have put me in closer ... glad I caught it then.


I'll try to put the screen shots in order, but the time is on them if they get mixed up.




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http://fs-duenna.com/flights/ShowFlight.php?flight=KNwguq9JztZroMYqloEWiLduY

 

[Dil52]

Nice job salt and nice shots,

You can never say you ran out of NAVAIDs now.

There are always hundreds of them all around.... and now you know how and where to find them!

dil

 

[salt_air]

Thanks Dil!!


Been lacks (sp?) lately with this thread ... busy times.

But the Job ain't over till the paperwork's done.



I've made some long and sloppy hops ... presently back in Venezuela at Puerto Ayacucho (SVPA) and in good position to hit Curacao later tonight or tomorrow ... bringing an end to one journey and the continuation of another.


I have made flights that were mostly NDB guided, but there were areas in each one that had no signals available.


Purposely set up that way rather than making a path from one NDB to the other to make use of Dil's fine teachings on sextant navigation and to go the shortest way .... straight.


Apologies for shorting the posts as I didn't do one at the end of each flight.





There's really been enough about me anyway ... I just wanted to show from a different (novice) point of view how the sextant can be incorporated into what you've already been doing.

Practical sextant ... just like I'm using it as of late .... and I notice the more I use it the easier it is and the more I can see and understand the wealth of informative scrip that will be left behind by Dil.


Copy this stuff down for later if you have any interest .... he has done a complete and thorough cover of every facet by creating scenarios just to make specific points.


Genius ... quite the Navigation Professor especially for what we do inside MSFS.





One of the things that has to happen differently on flights is the use of time stamps ... may not have mattered before .. because even though we are flying in the 30's or 40' or whatever we still have the outlet and luxury of things like FSNav or whatever your favorite is.


Unless you've "signed up" for an event that doesn't allow moving maps and GPS and the like ... you will use it almost as second nature ... so that's the other thing that has to happen.


Make the plan in FSNav sure ... but then turn it off and leave it off.

Take notes from the plan that you will need ... coordinates, radio frequencies, notes on possible terrain issues, landmarks like lakes rivers ... blah, blah, whatever.


Simulating sextant navigation means simulating the time when they were used to get around ... with that and at the most NDB's you are going to use (and would have had to use) a lot of notes and scratch paper ... we don't normally do that ... it's awkward and not necessary .... unless you don't have FSNav or whatever you use ... then you don't know where you are unless you have maintained a grip on it since the time you departed.



Sounds like I'm preaching ... and a lot of this is also painfully obvious, but still until I attacked this method of navigating ... this way, I just couldn't "see" it.

Reckon it only has a small amount of light it puts off ... so you have to put yourself in the completely dark to see it ... No other aids at all ... none.

You have to attend to it as well ... like that "Boy Scout" fire you just started in January ... keep an eye on it so it doesn't go out and keep feeding it so it will get big enough to be of some use.


You have a plan, but you have to plot your course as to where you are along its path and you have to make corrections you find necessary to maintain the line.

You have to stay on top of it ... if it gets away from you you're in deep trouble ... potentially lost ... that's something else we haven't "felt" in a while with all or cool gadgets we have running.





This was just as rewarding as learning how to use the instruments back in the early "Green Screen" simulators that ran on DOS ... quite elating to see the green-white tower lights at Catalina Airport the first time I tried to fly on instruments in the dark.


Can't thank Dave Bitzer, Mark Beaumont, and our buddy Dil52 enough.




Thjs post is running a little long so I'll start another that's strictly business with just a few observations (promise .. )

Then I'll be on my way till the next event here.

 

[salt_air]

Conclusion or Down safe in Curacao.

Spread too thin to cover what I had originally intended, but I would like to close out with something that may help folks to get after this sextant"stuff".




Just drag it out and use it ... doesn't have to be important to your flight plan at all.

Just drag it out like you would a magazine while you're sittin' on the hopper ... something to look at or read while your waiting ... uh, so to speak.

After a few tries and successes with getting your efforts to display readings that are close to what you know are right .... then use it a little more and more ... like in the spaces between nav signals on some of your flights ... do your best to figure when you will get there and write down the coordinates .... keep a sharp look out for the time of day and when you "think" you've hit the mark, take some shots and see what you come up with.

You have to keep track of your time and speed ... [a course on E6-B if you haven't tamed that valuable tool yet there's some more fun]

You can make pretty good guesses over shorter distances as to how far you are from your last known position ... then shoot at whatever is available per the link:http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/cel-nav-data ... bookmark it.

Don't set yourself up to fail ... make it easy and almost boringly simple ... then turn up the wick a little at a time as you feel and see better how things work.





I put more into it in the beginning and made it harder than it needed to be.

Glad to see Dil52 come along when he did and also glad to have had input and support from the Simulated Bubble Sextant's Father ... one of 'um anyway ... Dave Bitzer.

You really don't have to know or learn any Spherical Trigonometry or be as smart as Galileo or one of the guys at NASA about the Stars ... Ah, but if you are or aspire to get better acquainted ... it will just be that much more fun.




I hope at least one other person will be able to enjoy this because of what I have done or lead them to find.





That was the last of the historical nav-aids I needed to add to my collection.

Looking for more, but as of this writing and my last search in the larger libraries like this one ... I'm up to date with knowing how to operate each one.

Not sure how to incorporate, but I'd like to see "old school" navigational requirements in the RTW some year ... maybe in a bonus stage if nothing else.




As long as 3rd party addons as good as this are constantly being uploaded, I don't care if they ever make a new MSFS.





Thanks to the SOH Around the World Race/ Multiplayer Events Forum .... members and Moderators alike for allowing me to ramble on about this.




Cheers,





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