Cell phone navigation

[Steven Carleton]

Hi, all:

I had heard that navigation by sun sights using a simple clinometer was possible with reasonable accuracy if many observations were taken over several minutes, and the results averaged (I believe John Luycks of InfoCenter [now deceased] made the suggestion). There are now cell phone apps that allow determination of the tilt of the face of the phone to within a tenth of a degree. When the face of the phone is tilted, the moment when the face is parallel to the suns rays can be approximated’ by noting the tilt at which dust on the surface of the face just becomes illuminated. Has anyone tried this? If so, what degree of accuracy was achieved, and how many sights might be required to find a LOP within say, 5 nm of the viewer’s position?

I plan do do an empiric determination of this myself when I have some free time (rare) and a sunny day (rarer still), but thought I would ask whether this particular wheel had already been invented by someone else.

Best,

Steve

[Ken Gebhart, Jr.]

Sounds interesting, please keep us posted on your research.

[Author]

Posts