Aircraft saved by rudimentary Astro?
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Aircraft saved by rudimentary Astro?
I'm due to give a talk on Aviation Astro Navigation and would like to introduce it with the story of the airliner which received a distress message from a lost single pilot aircraft. The airliner crew established the position of the lost aircraft by means of very rudimentary astro using the altitude of the sun measured with a thumb and its azimuth. But I can't recall any of the interesting details such as when, where, who etc. Can anybody help?
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Recommended reading... Powered Adventure: Emergency - Crisis on the Flight Deck - Stewart, Human Performance (includes the true story of Flight 771, not the embellished movie version)
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Previous thread here http://www.pprune.org/aviation-histo...-1950-60s.html
Is there another form of Astro.....?
In my opinion, this was quite sophisticated Astro. An excellent source for these techniques is "Emergency Navigation" by David Burch
The Kamal qualifies as rudimentary but practical - a piece of wood and a knotted string for measuring star altitudes:
and at the other end of the scale you have the Apollo GNS and Sextant - sophisticated by any definition:
ION Museum: Sextant, Apollo Guidance and Navigation System
