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Old 9th Sep 2010, 08:11
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Pontius Navigator
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
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Jimgriff, no. AP1602 the Air Almanac stopped publishing the Dec and GHA data many years ago. The UK Air Almanac. It is now reduced to tables for risings and settings and for night luminance. It is possible using ephemeris to calculate the astro data for doing a heading check etc but even 20 years ago astro was not taught at the basic nav training. Only those destined for the heavy, traditional, navigation roles - VC10, C130, Nimrod were taught astro.

FJ guys were simply taught that the sun rose in the east, set in the west, and at noon was due south. If they lost heading reference, look at the time, if it was 1100 then assume the sun bore 165 and go from there.

In the 70s, before the additional vertical stabilisers were fitted to the Nimrod it was impossible to get an astro fix with any reliability as the aircraft could experience heading changes in the order of 2 degrees during a shot and the Kolsman sextant was a pig compared with the peri-sextant.

The AP3270s series was declared obsolete in the 90s after the AP1602 ceased in 1997.

PS, AP1602 used to be an identical copy of the USN version except the latter, IIRC, had yellow pages and a plastic spiral binder. It appears the USN still produce the traditional astro tables:

The Air Almanac — Naval Oceanography Portal
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