Hello, greetings, I really like celestial navigation, so I want to start getting to know this whole world, I stumbled upon your channel and here I am... I really liked your content, continue making videos like this, thank you and greetings from Barcelona
I was a USAF RC-135 navigator in the 80-90s. We used to shoot cell every 20 minutes on 12+ hour missions while going 450 mph. Works well in a stable platform if you do the calculations and plotting correctly. Very easy to make a mistake, however. One relatively easy celestial calculation is using Polaris. The measured angle between the horizon and Polaris (HO) equals your latitude, more or less. Only works in the Northern Hemisphere. Thanks for sharing.
How did you learn to do aviation level celestial navigation?? I feel like i need to keep watching this video and write down the step by step process you did. I’ve been interested in learning this for a long time but it always seemed so complicated. So cool to see you do this in MSFS and that there are apps to run to actually complete the process like shooting the Sun! If you have any tips on how to learn I would love to hear it. Thanks for making this video!
Glad this subject interests you. I learned everything from "ElectronVolt". Even if you don't have flight simulator, you can download his zipped file which comes with a PDF tutorial that guides you through the process here: flightsim.to/file/17738/celnav-for-msfs-celestial-navigation-sextant He also has a discord server, that you can find linked to from that PDF as well. He's very knowledgeable and helpful with any questions you might have there.
Wow - thanks for the memories. A drone can cover so much more ground (and sea).. I loved living, working, sailing and snorkeling there in the 80's but didn't do much photography. Silly me.
Very nice video, SV. What do you think of that recent sonar image taken in the vicinity of Howland Island that appears to show an airplane? On your simulated flight, how far off course would you have been if you had not accounted for the International Date Line in your calculations?
Thank you! That recent sonar image by Deep Sea Vision? I have my doubts. I'm not sure where they found it. Some sources say roughly 100 miles west of Howland Island. Others say near the Marshall Islands which seems ridiculously far off course. Thanks to WW2, there are a lot of aircraft on the seafloor (though perhaps not as many near Howland), and it's probably just a rock formation, but will be interesting to see what they find. I think the International Date Line theory has no bearing at all. You only ever use Zulu time (which was around back then), when referencing tables. In any case your position east or west of the IDL, has no bearing on your calculations, nor tables used. The only IDL "phenomenon" which I mentioned in the video was that you get to land in Howland "before" (local time) you take off from Lae (local time). Crossing the anti-meridian [not IDL] (from the East to Western Hemisphere) may have caused a problem, if Noonan forgot to use MINUS for longitude AFTER crossing the 180 degree meridian. I may look into that and see what a possible error that may provide. The main issue I have with that theory is that Noonan would have to repeat that mistake more than once (like selecting his Assumed Position); where your LHA will not result in an integer, when out of "phase", but I'd assume that is something he would have been well aware of, being considered one of the best navigators of the time, and would have been a primary focus of his when initially planning the flight. I think the most likely (and final) reason (in a long chain of bad decisions that were made) was that they had low overcast skies most of the flight. Flying below the low overcast when getting near Howland could have made it impossible to see the tiny flat island beyond a "shorter" horizon (due to the low altitude). Even with plotting a "perfectly executed" fix above the clouds prior to descent, the "normal" tolerances (accuracy) of aerial celestial navigation is still +/- several miles. They planned to use the Coast Guard's radio as an NDB, (a necessary component for this specific unique destination in my opinion); but some speculate that the ADF they had on board couldn't tune to the lower frequency used by the ship (though my memory isn't clear).
this content is so underrated, the commentary is great. Keep it up, if only my PC could run this game, also question, when you're in the cockpit, are you in VR??
Thank you! No I'm not using VR. I've not invested in the equipment--yet. But for making videos, I think VR recording doesn't look very good. I just use TrackIR that amplifies my head movements, by using an IR camera to monitor 3 reflectors on a ball cap I wear. There are other headtrackers out there for use with 2D monitors like Tobii (which does eye tracking as well), and some apps like SmoothTrack make use of your smartphone's accelerometers to track your head movement too. I haven't tried any of these though.
Yes, it's very annoying. Your comment just prompted me to look into this, and sure enough there's a Circuit Breaker to disable it! Thanks! Ha. Not sure why I didn't even look to see if it was modeled before.
I wondered if anyone would notice... 😜 I got a strike on this channel (and shadowbanned) thanks to his allies; so just giving them the finger in a subtle way.
the tablet in the DC-6 cockpit didn't have GPS... but yeah, there's other virtual ways to effectively use GPS in the simulator regardless of the aircraft. But for the challenge, I avoided accessing any of that information during the flight. Hence all the dumb mistakes I made... 😬
@@SkyborneVisions it was the no gps and the playback which made the video. You inspired me to get my own msFlight stimulator. Ps, I fly a220 IRL, all the bells and whistles, so it’s a kick to go back in time.
@@tonymcflattie2450 Awesome you're an A220 pilot! The biggest plane I was ever PIC for, was a Baron 55, 30 years ago. Definitely get yourself MSFS. Just wish someone would model a virtual sextant that would require aiming at the right star.
Very well done. Would be interesting to see if Howland was more or less difficult to spot if you'd flown the LOP from under the clouds as AE did (at 1000 ft).
Thanks. Interesting suggestion: I just tested in the sim by slewing 13nm away (the distance I was in the video when I caught sight of the island from 12,000') at 1,000 feet. The only thing visible is the cruise ship (barely visible rendered as white dot). The cruise ship is much larger than the USS Itasca, so doubt I would have seen a ship that size from that distance. Plus the island itself isn't visible from that low angle.
Loved it! The disco, the Otto Man, the Einstein bobblehead, crop circles...I half expected Team America World Police to come out of Mount Rushmore. LOL
Never had to use a sextant on a plane. Very well done. Spent some time on a aircraft carrier in the Pacific. One of my ship mates was the ship navigator. He was on the bridge daily taking readings with the sextant. I once asked him why he did that since he had GPS etc. on the ship. His response was if there was a war (nuclear) all of that fancy stuff would be gone and he would be back to using a sextant. Made sense to me, so I learned to use the sextant. Lots of fun and very rewarding to plot an accurate position!
Brings back lots of memories, I was hoping you would have footage of smugglers inn, I used to live across the street from it. Me and my brother got burnt real bad at Jais Aben, spent too much time in the water under the sun. Spent a lot of time there. Nagada too, and this "DCA Compount" that I believe is across the bay from the north side of the city. We could see the city lights from the coast line behind our house there.
Celestial navigation takes, obviously, a lott more skill that even radio range (A-N style morse code) navigation or ndb navigation, let alone vor and ultimately gps navigation today. If anything, this video makes me appreciate how great we have it today, where pilots can just press the direct to button to a waypoint anywhere on the globe and get directly to it, not having to worry about wind correction and drift because the autopilot tracks a direct course the that gps waypoint. Another thing that I realised is how powerful littlenavmap is, and how it absolutely runs circles around all other flight sim 'efb' software out there, and possibly is even better than some real world efb programs like Foreflight
Yes, this really makes one appreciate just how difficult and how much skill was required being a celestial navigator in a relatively fast moving aircraft was; before LORAN. I can't imagine the stress involved with doing so much math (without a calculator or spreadsheet) in a timely fashion. Yes, I'm surprised at all the features LNM has, compared to pretty much anything else out there, and it's FREE!
Can you explain with a little bit more detail, how you measured the winds at 15:10 ? You mention turning the aircraft by a certain amount of degrees for a certain amount of time and then waiting another set amount to take the measurement; what are you measuring here exactly? And how can I replicate this with the dc6
@@pacitoman9721 So, instead of trying to turn exactly 45 degrees off course, I decided to use the constant 4 minute turn rate (the time it takes to make a full 360 degree turn) of the autopilot for 30 seconds. I found this easier, then trying to chase a specific heading; especially to minimize the time flying off-course. I would then roll the plane with the autopilot the opposite direction for a full minute in order to head back to the course line. Each time the autopilot would roll wings level, I'd then write down the actual heading I was flying, and use that with my wind drift reading. I used the Driftmeter (created by ElectronVolt at flightsim.to/file/19402/simple-driftmeter-for-msfs ) It's not very accurate over water, and in retrospect I think it caused more confusion than it was worth (though I also made a silly mistake with my calculations too; as I detailed in the video at the end). But it basically measures your drift angle. So, once you've stabilized after a turn (flying a consistent airspeed in level flight); you can use ElectonVolt's app that simply takes a snapshot, and records the angle of drift (crab angle) relative to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. This crab angle (left or right) compared to your actual heading is then plotted to determine the wind vector. The real wind drift meters were basically like bombsights, where the operator would rotate the scope to align crosshairs with the apparent motion over the ground. The angle between the crosshairs and line (aligned with longitudinal axis of aircraft), would be your crab angle.
@@SkyborneVisions Hey thanks for taking the time to explain. It took me about a week on and off to understand almost everything but the landfall procedure. At 23:55 you show the filled up values for the calculated Hc at the 12 min intervals. I get the values for Hc at the 1hr intervals or half hour intervals, with the correction tables. But where do you get the values for the 12 min intervals to make a straight line for the sun at the destination? My blue line has only 2-3 points; the Hc values for the hour or half hour precalculated ones. How do I get the 12 min or any other min interval values? Do I use the motion of body tables to correct the degrees? Or do I need to find the LHA and declination for every 12 mins from the correction tables and calculate the Hc that way (that seems like a lot of work)
@@pacitoman9721 Good questions. As you suggested, you can get the values for Hc at 12 minute intervals by using the "Increments and Corrections" table (like you would for 30 minutes). Notice, however, that for every +4 minutes, the correction is exactly +1 degree? So, for 12 minutes, that's simply adding 3 degrees to your LHA (no need to recalculate from your GHA). Yes, it's still a LOT of work, and something I could never do on-the-fly WITHOUT a calculator or spreadsheet (at least as an inexperienced virtual navigator). The aerial navigators of 80 years ago were definitely cut from a different cloth! In reality they might not have calculated as many points; or done the calcs before the flight and hoped their ETA didn't vary by more than hour or whatever window they gave themselves. I personally set up a spreadsheet using the formula given on page 5 of the Sun Almanac, another formula I found for refraction error, and another formula for density altitude, and using some logic parameters (referenced in the tables) that will spit out an Hc for me, simply by inputting Ap Latitude, LHA, and Declination. When it comes to the landfall plotting, the only values of input that change is the LHA. Well, declination can change somewhat, but usually not more than a minute in an hour. You can look up the declination for the top of each hour, then interpolate as necessary.
What a beautiful way to remember your time on the island! I love the custom scenery of the airport and seeing the Air Nuigini livery takes me back. And of course the Lightning's connection to Bougainville! What did you use as references for the airport and terminal? I lived in Arawa as a kid for a few years in the mid - late 80s and remember the people and the time fondly, and the sailing and the island hopping. My dad used to travel in the Westwind. I took an MSFS tour around the Arawa area recently - you certainly get a sense of the scale and ruggedness of the terrain. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed this, as a former resident of Arawa! I was always envious of those that got to fly in the Westwind--Ha. It was a Cessna 402 for me or Air Niugini's F28... oh and once a Bougair Norman Islander. As for reference to the airport, I used Google Earth (it has much more recent and higher resolution aerial imagery than the stock scenery used from Bing maps). The resolution is so good, the line markings on the ramp were very clear, so it was easy to trace them. The Terminal was based both on Google Earth's footprint, and photos I had taken of the terminal when I was visiting in 2017--though I didn't take enough for this project, as I never anticipated making scenery for a flight simulator. I have gotten a few more photos from locals, (since releasing the scenery) that give more details to the side facing the parking lot, but I haven't taken the time to update that. However, it would never be a perfect replica anyway, with my lack of modelling skills and not being onsite to take measurements myself. The terminal that is there now is much better than what was there before the civil war... and I think among the best in PNG for that matter. It helps that it's relatively new, but the managers have a strict "NO BUAI" and "NO PIPIA" policy too. To be clear, no Google Earth textures are used in this scenery. Yes, the relatively high resolution of the terrain mesh in MSFS really sets this simulator apart from pretty much any other simulator (especially of the Bougainville area--which is often neglected), where you can appreciate more of the "ruggedness". I'm always surprised at how small the scale seems to be--compared to my childhood memories. Ha.
Yeah if I hadn’t run a couple errands before my flight. 😉 I started later than I planned while trying to maintain the challenge of real weather with real time.
