Do you consider the standby 'Whiskey Compass" as permanently unnecessary in every aircraft as well? If you should lose all electrical and backup power, which way is it to the nearest landing strip?
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Obsolete Stuff
- Thread starter Black_Fly
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Not having an electrical systems means that's one less thing to go wrong. I just fly low enough to see the town name on the nearest water tower to get my bearings. An advantage of living in farm country and flying a plane with a tailwheel that lands at a brisk walking pace means the world is my runway. I did put a nosewheel plane in a muddy soybean field once after an engine failure and that didn't end well for the plane.
I have and often use one of those, though it's not as nice as yours.
That level of technology just means less to go wrong, and it lands so slowly you're unlikely to get hurt. They used to say, "The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you."
No, not every aircraft; only those with sufficiently robust levels of redundancy. The Gulfstream has four generators, each capable of powering everything on the airplane, and each driven by a completely independent source. If every generator were to somehow fail, there are multiple batteries, including dedicated emergency batteries whose only purpose in life is to power essential items (like the magnetic direction indicators) when all else fails.
Many, if not most of the aircraft being built today still have a wet compass, but I don't lose any sleep over flying one that doesn't.
Triangles, French curves, circle stencils of various sizes, various sizes of compasses, dividers, angle gauges.....all still being used in my shop.
my grandfather's ink well.. keep it on my desk, have to polish it once in a while tho.
I'm obsolete now also, so I like to have other old things around ;-)
I have rescued what I could of the past from the teeth of time.
- John Aubrey, 1697
on every trip, the mantle of the lantern would have broken off somewhere along the rattletrap road.. still running a 1998 gas stove, on the lantern I've happily gone to a solar LED light ;-)Good point. I have to admit, I have gone back to white gas lantern and stove for car camping. The lantern, because it's quieter than propane. The stove, because the lantern.
still have one like that, though mine is not nearly so nice.
I am way behind on getting in this thread. It seems I am not alone. In my mind obsolete just means I can afford it, they are still useful. Back in the seventies I was doing land surveying and natural resource work and use a planimeter often. When I moved away from that field I got into boats, building, measuring and designing. No longer having access to a planimeter I resorted to a making a Hatchet Planimeter.
I didn’t put the pennies on for the pic. Obsolete, but I still have it. I finally found one at an antique store.
I’ve also got a map measure, with the offset wheel and the swiveling handle it is real easy to follow a squiggly line.
When I lived on my big boat I had one of these which I’m sure most people now would consider obsolete. I still have it but it’s not been used in a long time.
As a draftsman I still have and use my rapidograph pens, ruling pens, along with all manner of triangles and a complete set of ships curves and the spline weights to hold flexible battens when drawing or lofting.
I guess you could say my milling machine and South Bend lathe are obsolete too.
Jim
I didn’t put the pennies on for the pic. Obsolete, but I still have it. I finally found one at an antique store.
I’ve also got a map measure, with the offset wheel and the swiveling handle it is real easy to follow a squiggly line.
When I lived on my big boat I had one of these which I’m sure most people now would consider obsolete. I still have it but it’s not been used in a long time.
As a draftsman I still have and use my rapidograph pens, ruling pens, along with all manner of triangles and a complete set of ships curves and the spline weights to hold flexible battens when drawing or lofting.
I guess you could say my milling machine and South Bend lathe are obsolete too.
Jim
This is what a set of ships curves looks like if anyone is curious.
Jim
Jim
Sometimes I think I should reproduce this sign for my barn door.
Jim
Jim
I’d love to learn to use a sextant. Probably not going to happen in this lifetime, but an intriguing skill.
It does take some practice. You need an accurate timepiece, knowledge of standard stars and how to recognize them, books of pre-calculated numbers, ironically called "sight reduction tables", plus the current edition of the Air Almanac with time and date.
There is a list of 51 standard stars (plus sun and moon) that you need to learn to recognize by location in constellations, brightness, and color. I had been an amateur astronomer since I was about 12 years old, so I already knew all of those required stars long before I entered nav training.
Select 2 or 3 stars above the horizon separated by 90 to 120 degrees around the compass circle. Fill out a paper worksheet to calculate the expected location of each star (compass azimuth and elevation above the horizon) at a projected ahead dead reckoning location and time in your near future for each star (projecting ahead ~20 minutes was standard), Locate and sight on a selected star through the sextant while holding the bubble level centered on the star, click the timer to measure its horizon elevation for a 2 minute average.
Record the average elevation value to the nearest minute of arc. (each minute equates to one nautical mile) Then do the same for the next star in turn. Adjust elevation values for atmospheric refraction and Coriolis shift due to earth rotation and aircraft speed, and plot a line of position on the map for each star, perpendicular to its azimuth direction. Ideally all 3 lines cross at point, but they will actually form a very tight triangle if all is good. Your location at the center of the triangle is where you were at the measured “fix” time. Now project ahead 20-30 minutes and do it all over again. Easy.
One can also buy plastic sextants for not too much money and with the addition of an artificial horizon you don’t need to be on the ocean. The plastic box in with my sextant is an artificial horizon. I credit Calvin Rutsrtum writing about sextants in Paradise Below Zero with getting me interested. When I worked for the BLM surveying Rathdrum Mt in Idaho we took a noon sight every day we could see the sun.
Jim
Jim
Depends on how accurate you care to be. What is your location accuracy tolerance? I doubt those cheapie plastic things will get you very close to any kind of accuracy you might find useful. If you want to be within as close as one nautical mile, your horizon elevation measurement must be within down to one minute of arc = 1/60 degree. Tough to do on the cheap.
I could figure on an average of ~ 2 miles overall precision with a recently calibrated aircraft sextant with a 2-minute internal timer held steady on a good and level bubble, depending on turbulence. Crossing lines of position from three stars helps to accurately center the fix. I was selected to compete in the annual national AF SAC bomb/navigation completion three times. We did well.
Talking about obsolete, Eventually, I bought myself a TI-59 calculator to eliminate much of the manual math on the worksheet and. the sight reduction tables. I programmed the of all of those spherical trigonometry math calculations on the TI within the limited available keystroke steps. At the time, the Air Force did not allow any cheap (the first 4 function ones went for $800) hand held digital calculators to be carried onboard due to fear of electronic interference with aircraft systems. You could, however, only if you sent your personal calculator to an electronic systems measurement center to be individually certified as safe. Eventually, all calculators of a certain model were blanket certified, I had to wait for that for my trusted TI-59 (long since retired).
TI-59 calculator with programmable magnetic tape strip.
I’m not disagreeing with you yknpdlr but it’s a way to learn.
Jim
Jim
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