Comments on: Goin South…Really South https://scoolerisms.com/goin-south Dive into Don Scooler's world of nostalgic tales, a journey through laughter, wisdom, and the spirit of an era gone by Mon, 07 Jul 2025 19:45:58 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 By: Donald Scooler https://scoolerisms.com/goin-south#comment-2153 Mon, 07 Jul 2025 19:45:58 +0000 https://scoolerisms.com/goin-south#comment-2153 You betcha. Celestial navigation was all we had flying the North or South Atlantic. Ya see, I’m old.
I especially liked 3-star navigation at night. But I shot the sun, moon and even Venus in the daytime. Our sextant was periscopic not hand held.
I told the story when I had a student nav, who I thought knew what he was doing. I let him work on his own for a couple hours after takeoff from Charleston.
He calmly told me about two or three hours in mid Atlantic, Don, I don’t know where the hell we’re at “. I asked calmly,” when was the last time you knew? He answered, “Right after we took off. “. Holy s–t, I thought
I had been monitoring our direction and airspeed, so I guessed our approximate location. ( Hence, Naviguesser)
I had him compute a celestial fix while watching. I got the sextant up and shot three stars ( luckily it was a clear night). We soon had our position fixed and we weren’t too far off course. I watched him closely for the rest of the mission. A learning experience for both of us.
Today GPS does all that. No need for navigators.

AI may replace pilots next.

]]> By: fran https://scoolerisms.com/goin-south#comment-2151 Mon, 07 Jul 2025 18:27:49 +0000 https://scoolerisms.com/goin-south#comment-2151 I loved your term naviguesser! Also found that navigating south of the equator was different. Never thought of that before. Did you really navigate using a sextent?

]]>