Russ and Donna Sherwin
  MV "Four Seasons"
2000 Nordhavn 46, Hull #70
Sunnyvale, Ca 94086

Robert: I agree with you, and I do carry the tools and a (very) rudimentary knowledge of celestial that would probably allow me to find my way to some land mass somewhere. But my point is, I would not be comfortable navigating this way on a permanent basis as some of you are. If I had to, I probably wouldn't do much cruising. For me, modern technology is the enabler. Morse code is much like celestial navigation. It's a good backup. Modern radios are marvelous communication devices, but they cannot violate the laws of physics that apply to signal propagation and signal/noise ratio (yet). You can get through on morse when you cannot on other forms of modulation, simply because it takes much less bandwidth, hence, less noise. If conditions mandated communication by morse code, it wouldn't disturb me much. I was an Advanced Class ham, and had gotten up to 25wpm at one point in the hope of taking the Extra class license. All of us "old fogeys" have some skill we learned a long time ago that is now largely obsolete and the new kids don't have the time or need to learn. Russ Robert Bryett wrote: > "Which leads me to think that it's a lot like navigation has become for the > old-salts. On this, I'm on the other side of the fence. I do not have a > background in navigation, know little about celestial, and rely heavily on > GPS." > > Nothing wrong with that (as long as you take spares), but celestial really > isn't that hard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Russ and Donna Sherwin MV "Four Seasons" 2000 Nordhavn 46, Hull #70 Sunnyvale, Ca 94086 ----------------------------------------------------------------------