I was always under the impression that Capt Collins' atlas was not terribly detailed - but I could be wrong. I can't recall seeing a copy of the relevant Antarctic pages anywhere; do they exist?
I'd be intrigued to know just how easy it would have been to read lat/long compared to a 1:250k map.
Mind you, in any case a pilot should not have been supplying his own maps from an atlas at home!
And as for plotting the position on IFR charts, the closeness of the longitudes there does take a bit of getting used to, especially for first timers (1 degree of longitude is about 12 nm at the northern end of Ross Is) A quick glance at my 1:3000000 McMudro map here at home shows that they were about two degrees of longitude out. It also has the longitude lines labelled every 5 degrees of longitude, but only at 75s and not on the bottom of the map. It takes a fair bit of work to accurately plot a position, and there are many ways to get it a bit wrong. Again, I don't know what chart they actually had, but again I'd be interested in seeing how easy it was to plot the position given the chart design.
Last edited by compressor stall; 5th Dec 2011 at 00:32.