A4 South Jason
Sycamore - Further to my last, we may differ a little on elevations. I've rechecked my original report notes and I have a pos of 51 12'.3 South 060 53'.1 West. This I remember taking from a chart, together with a couple of hand bearings from peaks. We didn't have GPS then(!), although we were trialling some commercial 'heavy steam powered GPS kit' of some sort, but this was fixed onboard HECATE. Hydrographic shore party mobile kit called a 'Geoceiver' was in use but not by us that day. It weighed a ton, needed heavy batteries and required several satellite passes between 30 and 70 degrees elevation I think, there wern't too many satellites then and corrections had to be applied etc I believe. (I wasn't a qualified 'droggie' either!). Any rate, your GPS fixes may well be slightly different than my plot on the day. Also, wreckage was spread over several hundreds of metres roughly ENE -WSW. My plot puts things about 200m south and 500m or so east of GPS, entirely possible within accuracy of original survey and Easting diifference explicable by wreckage spread. Incidentally, using the 'geoceiver', we proved South Georgia to be about half nautcal mile out from the original chart survey done by Captain Cook no less. Now he had some pretty crude kit, a very basic sextant etc, if not indeed a simple 'backstaff', although I will readily stand corrected if required by a properly qualified 'droggie. I'm thinking Capn James Cook didn't do a bad job after all ... despite the fact that he had been trying to find Antarctica at the time when he bumped into South Georgia instead.
Paul
Last edited by PR01; 13th Mar 2011 at 10:54.
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